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THE GRAPHIC ARTS SERIES 
ETCHING 


THE GRAPHIC ARTS SERIES FOR ART 
ISTS, STUDENTS, AMATEURS AND COL 
LECTORS. EDITED BY IOSEPH PENNELL 
VOL ILITHOGRAPHY SECOND EDITION 
VOL II ETCHING THIRD EDITION 
VOL III PEN DRAWING FOURTH EDITION 


EH TCHERS AND 
ETCHING 


CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY 

OF THE ART TOGETHER WITH 

TECHNICAL EXPLANATIONS OF 

MODERN ARTISTIC METHODS 
BY 


IOSEPH PENNELL 


N.A. 
MEMBER AMERICAN ACADEMY 
OF ARTS AND LETTERS DIRE 
CTOR GRAPHIC ART SCHOOL 
ART STUDENTS LEAGUE NEW 
YORK CITY FORMERLY LEC 
TURER ON THE GRAPHIC 
ARTS SLADE SCHOOL UNI 
VERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 
AND AT THE NATIONAL ACA 
DEMY OF DESIGN NEW YORK 


THIRD EDITION 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK MCMXXV 












COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1924, AND 1925, — 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED. 
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1919. 
REVISED EDITION WITH NEW 
MATERIAL, OCTOBER, 1924. 
THIRD EDITION WITH NEW 
PREFACE, OCTOBER, 1925. 
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


le 
iA) 
i rr 
ft i 
; Ar a f 
4 au 4 \ 
Tey 7, A 
")) hee » “oo 
j C's , e 


TO 
THE KEPPELS 

AND THOSE OTHER PRINTSELLERS 
AND PUBLISHERS WHO HAVE BEEN 
MY LIFELONG FRIENDS AND PATRONS 

L 

DEDICATE THIS 
BOOK 





GENERAL PREFACE TO THE GRAPHIC ART SERIES 


HERE are endless series of art books—and endless schools of art, endless 
lecturers on art and art criticism. But so far as I know there are no 
series of books on the Graphic Arts, written or edited, by graphic artists. 
This series is intended to be a survey of the best work in the past—the 
work that is admitted to be worth studying—and a definite statement as to the best 
methods of making drawings, prints, and engravings, written in every case by those 
who have passed their lives in making them. aes 





j 
A 


PREFACE INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY 


AM not, in the technical part of this book, going into the history of the methods 

of work, or the chemical problems involved in etching, unless they are in general 

use, or of value to etchers. I propose to describe and explain as fully and as clearly 

as possible, the best manners of making etchings, especially those not yet described, 
but employed to-day ; and supplement these descriptions and explanations by examples 
gathered from my own practice and that of other etchers in America, France, Germany, 
Italy, and England. 

There are two technical books by Etchers, on Etching, which may be read with 
profit: Lalanne’s Treatise on Etching (Traité de la Gravure 4 l’ Eau Forte, in the original 
French), and Short’s On the Making of Etchings, re-issued as Etchings and Engravings. 
Singer and Strang’s Etching and Engraving should have been perfect—one of the authors 
is an acknowledged authority on the history of the art, the other a recognised etcher, 
but the combination was not altogether a success. Hamerton’s Eicher’s Handbook 
was written by an amateur for amateurs. And there are endless others in endless 
languages, but all alike are of little importance. Hamerton’s Etching and Eichers, while 
it certainly did turn the attention of the artless to etching, and gave it a financial stand- 
ing in modern times, had nothing to do with encouraging etchers, as the two or three then 
living, whose art is discussed, had already encouraged Hamerton, by their work, before 
Hamerton began to encourage them, by writing of what they had done. His chapters 
on processes and methods are of small value, mostly disused, while others never were 
used, unless by himself. His Etcher’s Handbook too is completely out of date, and even 
Lalanne and Short have no knowledge of many of the present methods or do not refer 
to them, while some later writers are too conservative, or stupid, or hide-bound to have 
anything to do with the newer ways of working. Other writers are authors, not artists, 
and what they say is of no importance technically, unless some artist told them to say 
it, and then they frequently flounder into technical traps. Far away the best recent 
historical work is Prof. Dr. Singer’s Die Moderne Graphik, Leipsic, 1914. Haden’s About 
Eiching contains many interesting comments but few practical instructions. 

Everything about making an etching can be learned from an etcher in a morning : 
but it will take the student all his life to put his learning into practice: and even then he 
will almost certainly fail to become an etcher; though he can easily become a successful 
manufacturer of commercial copper plates, commercial states, commercial catalogues, 
and, the end of all, a commercial success. 

As for the historical, or rather critical, section of this book, the trouble about all 
historical works on etching, or any of the arts,is that the authors without any discrimina- 
tion, have included all those who have made a name, a notoriety, a plate, with the result in 
my case, when reading years ago Hamerton’s Eftching and Etchers, that I thought in my 
ignorance all the work of all the artists discussed in it should be studied, though for the 
life of me I could not see why, and it was not till years after that I learned it was to be 
mostly avoided, and only Hamerton’s ignorance, or plates he had got hold of, gained such 
etchers a place in his big volume. This sort of writing is not only harmful—it is dis- 
graceful, as it is founded either on ignorance or a wish to pad out a volume. Then 


ix 


PREFACE 


there are other sorts of art writers: parrots—a whole aviary of them,—but they need not 
be listened to. The real history is usually as pompous as ponderous, and as incomplete 
as unreliable, useless as a book of reference, unreadable as literature. Such books, 
however, are taken deadly seriously—and they are deadly—even if mostly made by 
“authorities”, or maybe because of it. Another sort is the snippety, chirpy, chatty 
kind; and then there is the gaudy volume with specially prepared plates, sometimes 
a method of selling a collection, or gratifying the collector’s vanity, or exposing his 
ostrich-like ignorance; sometimes the work of an amateur with a mission. 

Now this book is intended for the student and collector, and I propose in the his- 
torical part, which will be as short as possible, only to discuss the work of etchers of 
universally admitted position, and that without any reference to their lives, or their 
gains, or their scandals, or their period. I cannot be responsible if by so doing the stu- 
dent should go wrong. If he, or any other reader, thinks I have left out a great etcher, 
I should like to know of him. I do not think I have—that is among the masters who 
have gone from us—and this book is not an advertisement of living etchers. The 
trouble is that in all art books, not only art histories, all art teaching, there is no dis- 
crimination. It is not what the student learns from books or teachers, but what he has 
to unlearn for himself that is so difficult. But, if he starts by looking at good art in- 
telligently, and working scientifically, he has—if he has anything in him—only to go 
ahead. 

One big modern artist has confessed that it was just because he did not have to 
unlearn things that he had time—and the ability—to learn and then to practise them. 
Another big modern teacher has said that he could teach any student to paint, draw, 
etch, but God alone could make him an artist. 

And it is with the idea of keeping such rules and laws before the student, that this 
book has been written, and by writing it, I hope I have done the weakest brother no 
harm, even though I should persuade him not to try to become an etcher. 


“We are apt to assume that there was little or no bad work done 
“‘in the old times. For my own part I believe on the contrary there 
“were mountains of it, but that it has mostly, mercifully for us, passed 
“ out of existence,” 


has been written recently. This is true, and if by the things I have said, the methods 
I have explained, and the examples I have shown in this book, I have not said, ex- 
plained, or shown anything that might tend to preserve, even a mole-hill, or waste 
paper basket full, of bad prints to be trampled on in the future, I shall be glad. 

I have scarce referred to metal engraving for the simple reason that to-day it is 
scarce practised. In the past Diirer, Marc Antonio and Mantegna carried it to perfec- 
tion succeeded by original engravers, like Nanteuil later, but copyists like Reynolds and 
Lucas still later, were not really creative artists, only astonishing plodders. Engraving 
and mezzotint are for the methodical, the mechanical. Etching is for the creator, the 
personal, passionate artist. The reproductive engraver has for the time disappeared, 


x 


PREFACE 


the commercial etcher has ousted him, but there are no reproductive etchers who 
have surpassed him. 

As a record of fact, the photograph—the unfaked, untouched, photograph— 
surpasses both sorts of copyists. 

But this book is about Etching, not about Engraving. Haden puts the matter very 
well in his pamphlet About Etching, when he says “the moment the possibility of act- 
ing upon the plate by an implement used like a pencil was shown to them (the En- 
gravers) the burin fell from their hands and they became Etchers. While the graver de- 
scended at once to a class of men who thenceforth undertook by a slow and laborious 
process, to which the instrument was not ill adapted, to reproduce the works of others.”’ 

And he further says after at length pointing out the degeneracy of the modern 
steel engraver—despite his mechanical dexterity,— ‘‘ The comparison of the etching 
needle with the burin is the comparison of the pen with the plow.”’ 

I have used as illustrations examples of my work in the different methods of etch- 
ing. These are published as examples, not models, though they are considerably better, 
I know, than most prints which are being made to-day; but, apart from this fact, 
as I made them, I can explain how they were made, for most of the authorities never 
made an etching and many others can’t or won’t describe the process. 

Finally, Etching is the art of making sunken lines in, and printing from, metal 
plates: this and the great etchers and their methods are the subject of this book. 


LONDON, JANUARY, 1916. JOSEPH PENNELL. 


POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE 


THE publication of this book was stopped for four years owing to the war, and in- 
stead of being issued in London by Mr. Fisher Unwin first, it has been made by Messrs. 
Macmillan in New York. This however is but a small matter in comparison to what art 
in a big way has suffered. Many artists have given their lives; more have been ruined ; 
and a few have found opportunities—subjects—in the horrors and miseries of the 
war. Galleries in Europe ceased to acquire the few contemporary works that were 
made, unless these were commanded by the state. Some of the galleries are reported 
even to be destroyed. Exhibitions, save for the raising of war funds, mostly ceased, 
especially in Europe. And even as peace dawns, art still flies away. The belief in 
some quarters that a new art, or a new inspiration, would come from the war has not 
been realized. No one who knew anything ever thought it would, save in the case of 
those who recorded the war. 

But art will never die, it is everlasting, eternal; and though artists have suffered 
more than the members of any other profession, they will come into their own again. 

Precious records have vanished. For a while in Europe even those etchers who 
had the opportunity to work, unless in the government service, could obtain neither 
copper nor tools nor acids to carry on with. Paper mills in Italy have been burned 
and bombed. Old paper has disappeared. ‘Technical schools have closed. Dealers 


xi 


PREFACE 


were unable to obtain prints. Collectors had no time to collect. That such a state of 
things should come to pass was incredible. Yet it happened in our day and generation. 

Tradition in art, too, was in danger of being forgotten. It is with a view, then, of 
recording what I have seen and studied and experienced and practised, with a view of 
trying to carry on tradition and recording facts, I am glad to have had the volume 
written and ready to issue in the first year of the war—published now that I hope it is 
ended, now that I hope there may be no more war. And if the world really cared for 
art and literature and the arts of peace, there would be no more war or rumours of war. 
We have relapsed into vandalism and vulgarity. The world is now made up mostly of 
prigs and prohibitionists; they will venture on the suppression of art as they have 
ventured on the suppression of wine and song and brought about the unsexing of 
women. But art will arise again, and laziness, hypocrisy, and sentiment, which crush 
and cumber the earth, again will be swept away. I shall not see the new earth, but it 
will come forth. 


FINALLY FINISHED PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY 1, 1919. ba 


Note. I wish to thank the Fine Art Society, and Messrs. Dowdeswell and 
Dowdeswell for permission to reproduce Whistler’s Venice Etchings, Messrs. F. 
Keppel and Co. for much help in the preparation of the illustrations, Mr. H. V. Allison, 
M. J. H. Guest of the Cincinnati Art Museum and Mr. Weitenkampf of the New 
York Public Library for the Duveneck plate and Miss Koehler of the Library of 
Congress for looking up her father’s works, and last but not least Mrs. Pennell for 
reading the proof. 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


INCE the First Edition of this book was issued etching has again come upon 

the world and etchers are as the sands on the shore. I do not flatter myself, 

as Hamerton—or his friends did,—that the present fury in etching and 

flurry among etchers was caused by it—nor have any great etchers been 
made by my book, because the great etchers were already here as when Hamerton 
wrote. As for my book: I only am aware, but I even may be mistaken in this, of the 
presence among us, and the appearance, I think, since it was issued of one solitary etcher 
of merit, and he may not have seen it, and I do not know if he will maintain his position— 
or even continue to etch—though he does not seem to be a manufacturer of prints for 
publishers. But I do know that the book sold out, despite the fact that it was reviewed 
at length mostly unfavorably by American reporters and professors, and English hacks 
and dealers, but what most of them said I forget. I only remember there was not one 
practical suggestion or correction made by them of anything in it. They mainly re- 
peated that an artist should not write of his craft—they can not write even,—their 
craft is money making or making copy, but the book, I know, has found a place in many 
libraries and collections and I am glad to say has been bought for art schools and by many 


xli 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


artists. Of this Iam proud. On the other hand a mass of cheap books from manuals to 
histories, have been ground out by crowds of collectors, amateurs, curators, dealers, 
lawyers, every one but artists of reputation, etchers who cant etch, dealers who can 
sell, collectors who cant collect and professors who can preach what they cant practise or 
teach. They have not only written books, but brought forth schools, clubs, societies of 
etching, but not one single etcher have I been able to find as the result of their advising, 
tea drinking, suggesting, exhibiting, dealing—and the last covers the whole. And all this 
excitement is because etching has paid a few etchers. But these authorities have done 
harm. “Even a fool can do harm,” Whistler said. The Slade Professor too of the Uni- 
versity of Oxford—incidentally an official in the Print Room of the British Museum,— 
and quite a number of these authorities occupy similar positions, knowing as much prac- 
tically of art as the guard at the door of their departments—this official, Professor A. M. 
Hind, has written a book, A History of Engraving & Etching—it is so popular among 
the serious, that it has gone into several editions—and in it he describes the methods of 
making etchings. 

The Professor in his introductory chapter on the technique of Engraving and 
Etching, “Introduction Processes and Materials”’ records, I think, every antiquated and 
obsolete method of working—all of which he got out of books that have been discarded for 
years by intelligent craftsmen, (page 6) he explains a manner of Laying Grounds which 
was given up long ago in this country—and also by intelligent etchers in Europe. The 
roller ages ago replaced the dabber. On the same page his method of transferring draw- 
ings to the plate has been discarded, by those who know anything of modern methods, 
and when he talks, still on the same page, of “opening up the lines” with the etching 
needle—he means drawing on the plate—one is inclined to suggest that the head of the 
etcher who accepted his statements should be opened up—and a little modern informa- 
tion injected. 

He apparently knows nothing (page 7) of the modern methods of biting invented 
near half a century ago by Whistler and, I thought, practised by all etchers to-day, and 
he is no more helpful when he prattles (page 11) of aquatint or (page 14) quotes “‘ Gould- 
ing and his pot of treacle”’ in his description of printing. But concerning the best meth- 
ods, which happen to be new ones and also worked out in this country—maybe that is 
the reason—the Professor is silent, ignoring them completely. This is the kind of serious, 
solemn writing that is given the collector and dealer and from professorial platforms 
and in ponderous publications, so creating print clubs and an interest in etching—occu- 
pations mostly for the indolent. I hope students even in England know more than to - 
follow this authority, even though here anything English is still taken seriously by the 
solemn ones. His remarks on modern men are as quaint as his knowledge of present 
day etchers is limited. This is the sort of information given the collector and the dealer. 
But in what other profession would an outsider and amateur be allowed to lay down the 
law, and in what craft or trade would a man devoid of technical training pretend to 
discuss technical facts? 

I would not therefore trust a word he says, unless I know it to be true, in his his- 


xiii 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


torical chapters, though I presume he “got it all out of books,” as another of his col- 
leagues advised, but I do know that his modern historical chapters are but the record of 
his own opinions, and that it is on a basis of this sort that collections are sometimes 
formed and collectors sometimes created to their discomfiture and disgust when they un- 
load their collections, and etchers sometimes mislead when they try to etch. This is the 
most pretentious but not the most misleading volume that has—or a new edition of it has 
—appeared since my book was written. Most of the other authorities are as popular as 
pathetic, while a new class of writers—touts for dealers—have come to the surface who 
grind out gift books, for provincial consumption. Or special numbers for the use of old 
blocks or the intriguing of artists for new ones. On the other hand, Dr. Singer has issued 
new editions of his books, intelligent and straightforward, and in consequence has been 
imitated and pilloried in Germany—even side tracked in his own gallery, which he does so 
much to maintain and improve. In England Mr. Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of the 
Print Room at the British Museum, has stated in a monograph on Whistler that the 
American is the greatest of modern etchers and the equal of Rembrandt—as I have been 
saying for years but never expected to hear an Englishman admit—but the war brought 
strange things about, even to Mr. Dodgson’s taking over an American magazine of 
etching, The Print Collector’s Quarterly, which is always searching for new etchers and 
finding none though it does contain most interesting articles. Endless series of booklets 
and tomes have been published, but no new etchers to make new books out of have 
dawned or, at any rate, arrived, while most of the artists who really etch are not written 
about, the reason being that they will not give their plates for nothing to advertise 
authors and publishers. 

Though no new etchers have made a name or fame in the last four years, several well- 
known men have died, among them Auguste Lepére, a brilliant artist and craftsman, 
thoroughly trained, who could express himself by any of the Graphic Arts, but I can not 
help thinking he was more successful as a wood engraver of his own designs than in any 
other medium, and to compare his brilliant wood engravings and wood cuts with the 
clumsy bungling of many of his more notorious and financially, probably, more successful 
contemporaries, is to understand that the public, some collectors and some dealers do not 
know good from bad, certainly do not know a good thing when they see it and take the 
bad one. A second French artist, not so well-known for his etchings as Lepére, but far 
better known as an illustrator, was Paul Renouard whose aquatints and dry points of the 
ballet and other theatrical subjects have great merit. I saw Renouard for the last time 
at Verdun in 1917 where he and I were trying to work at the French Front. I failed 
completely. I do not know what—if anything—he did there, but later I saw an an- 
nouncement of war etchings to be issued by him, and a reproduction of a dry point of the 
ruins of Rheims which was very fine. Renouard’s great reputation was, however, gained 
as an illustrator. 

Another death to be lamented was that of Zorn, though I can not say I much regret 
the end of the output of his prints for they had become feeble and photographic beyond 
words—though the last had none of the photographic look about them. Zorn was the 


XIV 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


sky rocket of etching—and the stick is on the way down.! A most brilliant painter 
utterly devoid of a sense of line, he made, however, an enormous financial success prac- 
tising a craft which he had not the most elementary real knowledge of. His success was 
like that of his fellow countryman Axel H. Haig, from whom he learned etching, and I 
fear his end will be the same. Zorn was the collector’s etcher, the painter’s etcher—not 
the etcher’s etcher, but his anathema. 

It would be best to explain why Zorn is not among the great etchers. Everything he 
did looks like a sketch in oil paint—no separate line counts—his work is all tone—or a 
suggestion of tone. Compare Zorn’s best plate, said to be one of his first, Le Toast, with 
Whistler’s Riault The Engraver, and you will, or should, see—that one artist’s line is 
meaningless—all the coat, for example, could be left out—the color of it; with the other, 
every line is full of, alive with meaning and color yet all is suggested by vital expressive 
line. It may be asked which artist I am praising and which I am condemning—it is just 
such ignorance of line in art that has evolved so many bad etchers and print societies 
which they produce and collectors who flock to them. Lately I was talking before one—I 
do it to educate them—or attempt to—and when I had finished, a lady sailed in, (she had 
just comein. She had not heard a word I said—she did not look at a thing on the walls) — 
but she sailed up to me furry and smelly and said ‘‘Oh Mr. Pennell, your exhibition is so 
beautiful, and it was so sweet of you to come and tell us all about it.” ‘‘Yes madame, I 
can say it is beautiful because it is by the greatest artist of modern times.” She rather 
stared. Possibly I reminded her of her husband’s methods in his business. ‘‘ Why,” 
said she, “‘I thought it was yours.” “I regret madame it is not, you are looking at the 
work of Whistler,’—and she is an official of this print club! Great is American educa- 
tion, and the effect of etching on the classes. 

Steinlen has also gone but his etchings were few and unimportant. Two Americans, 
J. Alden Weir and C. Harry White, have died. Weir will be remembered for his experi- 
ments specially in engraving, and White for his early work and what he might have 
done had he lived: Klinger and Greiner died in Germany. The best known etcher, how- 
ever, who passed away was William Strang, a remarkable craftsman, and an interesting 
artist, if Strang had only tried to be himself, instead of imitating, even if successfully, 
every celebrity or notoriety of the moment he would have been a bigger man. It is in his 
portraits that he shows best what he could do, in his other work he jumped, but most 
skillfully, from Rembrandt to Legros, with whom he studied, and he ended by imitating 
the utterly weak and meaningless scrawling of Forain. Though he could not help getting 
more feeling in his line than Forain, Strang was a great worker as well as a great crafts- 
man, and he has made a place for himself among etchers. 

The New Art has invaded etching, and the same old stenciled tricks have been played 
with it as with paint. I suppose it amuses the people who perpetrate it and the fools 
who are fooled by it. American up to date students practise it, it is so easy and artless. 

Another matter which may call for comment is the price of prints. For some time— 


1 At a recent sale in New York, Zorn’s prints realized at public auction about ten cents on the 
dollar a collector had paid for them. 


XV 








‘ 


ANDERS ZORN: THE TOAST AND WHISTLER: THE ENGRAVER 


No plate by Zorn—the overrated—shows his weakness as an etcher better than this—The composi- 
tion is interesting and the drawing is good—there is little of that photographic snap shot feeling in it 
which eventually overpowered him and his fellow countryman Thaulow. There is much color too—but 
the lines with which the drawing is done are worthless, meaningless, half of them could be omitted and 
there would be as much color, more if he had known how to bite—and the other half are merely an 
attempt to paint with a point—Zorn was a painter and a brilliant one—but he was not in the right 
sense an etcher at all for he had no sense of line at all, the face—though filled with the look of hot flesh 
—is simply stupidly rendered—without the least idea of quality of line—the hands are like paint—and 
the coat is like nothing at all—the man who cannot etch a black coat without covering it with black 
monotonous lines—to show it is black cannot etch at all. Compare Zorn’s work with Rembrandt’s and 
Whistler’s they were etchers he was not. The proof of this, is in the portrait of Riault the engraver 
by Whistler, Riault wears—any one with sense can see—a dark coat yet it is left white without any 





work in it—save just where—in the shadows—to those who can understand suggestion—it is shown to 
be black—and then not with meaningless cheap, endless lines but by a few which tell. Compare the 
hair of one with the other and as to the face—poor Zorn’s stupid, stodgy, flat lines all of the same force 
with Whistler’s vibrating expressive vital work—anyone who cannot see this can never see or feel an 
etching. Most can’t and so get entangled with a collection. The Zorn is bitten the Whistler is dry 
point but the Whistler is a work of art while the Zorn is a worthless, an artless machine, as an etching. 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


in fact since the time of Rembrandt,—as is proved by the name of his Hundred Guilder 
print—the sum he or his dealer got for it—there was a slump or slackening until our 
day in the print business, but lately prints have been boomed financially and corners in 
certain men’s work made. Formerly it was not till an artist was dead and no more of his 
prints could be had, though to the supply of some deceased masters’ works there seems 
to be no end, that his prices rose. Now, however, arrangements are made for the artist’s 
prices once the prints have left his hands to rise. To such an extent has this been prac- 
tised that prints bring at times more in an auction than their price at a dealer’s, while the 
dealer’s price may be higher than the artist’s. I have every respect for honest, capable 
and intelligent dealers and do not know any others, and they must make a living, and if 
they do, they also make a living for the artist. But this inflation is nothing more than 
applying the methods of the stock exchange to prints and the same thing will happen to 
them as to inflated stocks, it is happening. Of course the owner always has his print, when 
the genius of the moment collapses, the purchaser of a share may only have a very in- 
artistic piece of paper left on his hands. But this booming can only have one end, a 
slump in etching and for these boomed prints, it is here. This has already happened 
once or twice in the past and it will happen again. Still the saving remnant which has 
carried on since the first artist scratched his etching on the wall of his cave, will carry on, 
and we may some day have a greater etcher than James M. N. Whistler. 

There is another financial matter that should be alluded to. It is the fashion to-day 
for small galleries and museums outside the large cities of America to take over exhibi- 
tions arranged by the directors of the large galleries or by societies, and even international 
exhibitions arranged by young ladies and politicians,—artists are not wanted to manage 
their own affairs,—which exhibit prints unframed and unglazed—and, if possible, unin- 
sured. As to selling the prints or endeavouring to appeal to visitors, that is about the last 
occupation in the thought of the gallery director—and as to the museum purchasing any- 
thing in many of these provincial places that is unknown—what they do is to get some 
sweet girl graduate or benevolent business man to lecture on the prints, or the artists. 
That any etcher should be trying to make a living by selling his prints is unheard of—or 
unthought of. What should be done is, for the artist who is invited to show a collection of 
his prints in such a public gallery, to demand that some should be purchased in return— 
otherwise he is likely to get them all back but in a sadly damaged condition. 

A strange thing is the American painter’s inability to appreciate any form of art but 
oil paint and his hoggish promotion of that was manifested this year when the National 
Academy of Design refused to exhibit etchings and engravings, maintaining that because 
there were so many painter members there was no room in the annual exhibition for the 
engravers, utterly failing, or pretending, to see, that it was not their members who were 
being excluded, they could not prevent their showing, but the etchers and engravers of the 
country, whom they were depriving of an exhibition place, a pretty way of “encouraging 
the Arts’’—the function of the Academy. 

I, also, since the book appeared, thought I could found a great Graphic Art School, 
uniting all the crafts of book making and the printing arts. I did get the backing of a 


XVill 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


few professional lithographers, notably Mr. P. R. Heywood of Heywood Strasser & Voigt, 
and the enthusiasm of the Art Students’ League of New York, but as to the craftsmen 
teachers, one left in a huff because, though he was king in his alley, when he got to the 
school he was nobody. His conceit of himself was as great as the pupils’ ignorance of 
him. Another, a professor, has never been ‘inside the class room, and never done any- 
thing but talk in the school. The illustration class poses the models, but has no technical 
or practical instruction and learns nothing of the crafts, knows nothing and is happy. 
My class is doing things and getting things—has even become known to the English. 
Prof. Morley Fletcher has visited it for a morning, and Germans have come to it, from 
Prof. Orlik to pupils from Munich, who remained to study, and are interested and really 
work, harder than any Americans except my Hebrew pupils who work more steadily than 
any, though Orlik called the place a “schweineret.” Foreigners are now coming here to 
learn technique which they cannot learn at home. Americans hide at home, proud and 
cocksure in the valour of their ignorance, or, when they go abroad, herd in schools by 
themselves and wonder what the foreigners do as they hang around their protected 
boarding-houses. No American educators, teachers, professors, have condescended to 
visit my school which succeeds without them. Still, there is a saving remnant in my 
class, which I have described in the book. 

There are several interesting facts which I have discovered in my two years of teaching 
in the United States. First, the appalling ignorance of and indifference to the Graphic 
Arts in the country, which is proven by the fact that with a population of one hundred 
and ten millions it is with the greatest difficulty that an artist of the greatest reputation 
can sell one hundred prints from a plate—usually he cant sell fifty—and even when he 
does, it is mostly because of some extraneous circumstance, or because it is considered a 
“‘good buy,” the merit of a work even counting against it. Though the artist often asks a 
prohibitive price for his work, Americans of to-day will, however, purchase a million nasty 
rotogravure copies of a poor photograph of some poor nonentity and each hang one on his 
walls and be proud of the fact and be sure he has got a good thing because he finds it in the 
parlours of all his friends on Main Street. Artistically these United States are in the 
Main Street, mid-Victorian age, and like England at that epoch, we are blindly proud of it. 

Quantity production is the thing, that is the reason for the success of the cheap and 
nasty publications which flood the country, everyone takes them, so they are right— 
no matter what rotten rubbish they are loaded with. The rich American does buy 
art, but old art and dealer-boomed art, either as an investment or because he must 
have what his rich neighbour has. In the past such people had their portraits etched 
and lithographed, now they go to a fashionable photographer. The public—there 
never was, I know, an artistic nation—but there never was such an artless one that 
prated so much of art as this. Remember the scheme for an Art Centre in New York. 
The heavens of mediocrity were opened to protect the Park—that they gave them- 
selves away as artless oafs was nothing—but it proved a hate of art in that they | 
refused to have an art gallery in it. Again in the school I have found that the pupils 
begin by loathing to work with their hands, to get dirty. I have a cowboy who prints in 


xix 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


gloves to save his fingers. Yet the mess he makes around him is unspeakable. Still, 
somehow, sometimes he does excellent work and makes interesting experiments. Many of 
the other students in the other classes in the school have no interest whatever in the 
crafts. They will starve sooner than learn one—and scarce a pupil becomes even an oil 
painter; most take to other jobs if they cant succeed immediately with oil paint, which 
they never can succeed at—but they can muck around at it, which they can not at etching. 
To paint you do not have to learn to draw—to etch you do, though I find there are 
students, not mine, who do their best to prove they can not. 

The average American student has no stick-at-it-ness. He and she are mostly 
expecting success to fall upon them at once, by which they mean cash, without waiting 
years and working hard for it. Most of their time they loaf, smoke and admire each 
other. Scarce a collector or teacher or dealer has visited my class; art critics avoid it. 
It is not yet catalogued and to have an opinion of your own is fatal in this standardized 
land. The students have no interest in crafts either, but they will study a cracker 
factory, a packing house or an uplift journal office, conducted around personally by 
guides to see quantity production, visiting it in a rubberneck wagon. Individual effort 
is beyond them. The teachers too in many schools know it all, all the theory, and are 
incapable of doing anything themselves and not a few American teachers of Art take 
money for teaching what they can not practice. I know this because students, or 
would-be students, write me from all over the country and tell me of their experiences 
and hopes and fears—and failures. 

As for the critics of art in this country, but two members of that profession—or oc- 
cupation—have visited the school in two years. Not an adequate or intelligent notice 
of it—save those I have written myself—has appeared. But then there are no authorita- 
tive critics of art in America writing for the press—and scarce any, if any, in England. 
On the continent there are a few, but art criticism here means mostly writing up shows 
that advertise in the critics’ papers. Some papers even demand to be paid for inserting 
illustrations. In any other country this would be called by another name, here it is 
publicity—and efficiency—encouraging art, advertising artists. 

I have no idea what my school may produce—if anything—but I have a definite 
proof that because art means individuality, and independence and character it has no 
future in this standardized, stabilized, hypnotized land, in which every attempt at 
individual creation is stifled by mass production. Still I am staying on and going on— 
though doubtless before long, if I succeed at all, some squirming, intriguing worm will 
drive me out and try to steal my ideas, but only undo all I have done. Still, certain 
things have been done in the school and certain pupils have got certain things out of it. 
But they are all in too much of a hurry to have time to learn that art is long—they are 
too fleeting—and most of them give up as soon as they encounter difficulties or else they 
are content with the merest smattering of methods of work and knowledge. Still, there 
is a saving remnant of workers. 

I started some years ago the idea of giving demonstrations of etching and lithography _ 
in this country. I was not the inventor of it. It was invented at the Art Workers’ Guild 


XX 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


in England, but now every little museum in every little town wants me to come and show 
them how to make prints—but when I do not go, they are far better satisfied to have 
their own local genius do it instead and they usually expect me to perform freely, for the 
good of art and to keep them from sleeping of an evening when their radio has gone wrong 
—they read no more, they see no more, they understand nothing. Such are the things 
which infest what used to be my country, but is now theirs. 

I wish to thank Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, his staff and the officials of the New York 
Public Library for granting me permission to reproduce prints in their possession, and 
I would also like to call attention to their photo-stat department by means of which 
most excellent reproductions of prints can be had, very valuable in teaching, lecturing 
and for exhibition purposes, and, even more remarkable, very cheap. 

In revising the book I find it much better than I thought—therefore, and because 
the book has been a success and the Graphic Art School a success, the critics rave. 
BROOKLYN, SEPTEMBER, 1924. JOSEPH PENNELL. 


Note. I wish also to thank Mr. Ernest Haskell and Mr. H. Devitt Welsh for valuable information 
with which they are credited in the book. And my pupils Messrs. Fagg and Ziegler for methods they 
have invented and allowed me to make use of. Miss Reinthaler for writing of my class at the Art 
Students League. There are other students whose work in the class has been suggestive and useful. 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


WAS surprised to learn from the Publishers, a few days ago, that the Second Edi- 
tion of this book, issued last October, had been exhausted, that they proposed to 
reissue it, and that, if I wished, I might write a new Preface. 

This gives me a chance to do two things; first, to acknowledge, after seeing several 
collections of Alphonse Legros’ prints, in which he forgot himself, or rather his slavish 
imitation of the technique of the backgrounds of the Old Masters and his mawkish 
sentiment, for most of his plates reek of the mannerisms of the past and the pathos of 
the present, that there was something in the man as an etcher to inspire the devotion 
of artists like William Strang and Charles Holroyd—I have placed their names in the 
proper artistic order—as well as many other of his Slade School pupils. I had not under- 
stood why, but had wondered why, they should so greatly admire a man to whom they 
were, I thought, so superior as etchers or, at any rate, Strang was. And I believed the 
painters of England right in electing Strang for his etchings to the Academy and the 
Government in knighting Holroyd, though that was because he was appointed Director 
of the National Gallery, not on account of his art. They were acknowledged, Legros 
was ignored. But lately there have appeared in certain exhibitions certain prints by 
Legros which prove that he was not only an artist, but a far bigger artist than these fol- 
lowers and imitators of his best work, the best of which I had never seen. Why did they 
never refer to it? Why, thoughI knew them, never talk about it or show it to me or to 


any one else I ever met? It was here in America, in the last year, that I saw it and learned 
Xx1 





A. LEGROS: PORTRAIT OF DALOU. PROMENADE DU CONVALESCENT 


The portrait of Dalou, the French Sculptor, though far more influenced by Van Dyke, might well be 
compared with the Whistler dry point of Riault, and Zorn’s Toast, it has far more lines in the face 
than the Whistler but they are far more expressive than the Zorn. The Promenade du Convalescent 


is a remarkably fine and right dry point. Every line has a meaning and weight which tells, from 








the extreme refinement and delicacy of the lines in the face of the woman to the rugged rich strength 
of those in the trees. Color too is rightly suggested both in the man’s and the woman’s clothes, and the 
trees behind them are drawn with the greatest character, put down with the most expressive lines. How 
much of all this color is due to Delatre, the printer, who instead of Legros, the artist, pulled and signed 
the proof I do not know—Goulding once told me Legros used to bring him batches of unproved plates 
to print, those he liked when he saw the proofs he told Goulding to print, the rest he destroyed. 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


that Legros was an etcher worthy of a place in this book—I learned it last winter in an 
exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. This being so, why did Poynter whom he etched, 
and the other Academicians who knew his paintings keep him out of the Academy and 
elect his pupil Strang, and why was he kept out of a knighthood bestowed on his other 
pupil Holroyd, when he had not only done this interesting work but given up his French 
citizenship to become a British subject and meet the sneers of his former compatriots, 
the French artists, who always asked ‘‘What have you gained?” and he always answered 
“What—Comment? moi, j’ai gagné la bataille de Waterloo.” But in the last few months, 
as I have said, I have come across some most interesting plates by him and, though I 
make no apology for what I have written about the works I had seen before, for they had 
little character, the works I have just seen have much and I am glad to include them and 
him among my great etchers. Hamerton too made the same mistake. 

This Third Edition permits me to point out that my book has had no criticism by critics 
of any authority, scarce any at all. But, as I wrote at the end of the Preface to the Sec- 
ond Edition, ‘the critics rave’’—or rather screech—and this Third Edition is my answer 
to them. The book has chiefly been used as a mine by art editors to extract illustrations 
from, either without any criticism of it or to illustrate notices of other books with them, 
owing to the utter rottenness of the American law of copyright and the almost complete 
corruption of the American art editor and art critic so called, who are mostly only ad- 
vertising agents for their taskmasters, publishers and proprietors who run the papers 
they write for. One critic has, however, remarked in what he would call a notice, but 
which is only a bid for acceptance among his class in England, that I do not know whether 
Durer’s Cannon is an engraving or an etching. I do not and could not tell unless I saw 
the plate, and maybe not then, but I believe it was drawn with a graver on a grounded 
plate and bitten in, and any one can see I am right by comparing it with the Rembrandt 
reproduced on the same page—I mean any one save a critic. This authority too states 
that I cannot tell the difference between an etching and a lithograph by Goya. As to 
those I was referring to, some prints catalogued in the British Museum as etchings, in 
other collections as lithographs, I can no more tell what they are than the cataloguers 
who confuse them, though I know that as Goya was a great experimenter in etching and 
lithography, no one, unless he had positive evidence in writing of the way the work was 
done, and there is none, would be sure. But then the average expert, critic, authority— 
I am only an artist—is always sure and is never weary of proving he is wrong, fooling 
others by his ignorance of everything he does not get out of books, which are as incorrect 
in their facts, as he usually is in his. But is there any one, save a few artists, now left 
in the world who knows anything about art though everyone now cackles about every- 
thing? I am further told by this same authority that I do not know the difference be- 
tween an etching and a lithograph anyway. In some cases I do not—lIt is only such 
authorities who always know, only they don’t know they are always wrong, for in our 
country we know everything, save that most critics, frequent professors and many cura- 


tors do not know enough to keep their mouths shut, and not only make themselves ri- 
XXIV 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


diculous, but do harm to those more ignorant than themselves every time they open 
them, for there are still more ignorant people, strangely, than themselves to humbug— 
else the authorities would not exist. 

And, though for them Whistler may be dead, it is because they did not buy his work 
for the Museums they mismanage and the colleges they misdirect when they could and 
will not spend enough now to get it if they can. Business is as rank in art as in stock- 
broking, both are run from the same standpoint, yet they might remember what Whistler, 
the greatest American artist, said of the authorities who boast of the knowledge gained 
by passing a lifetime in their galleries—that then, the guard at the door knows as much, 
really more than they, only he keeps his mouth shut while this sort of American curator, 
business man critic, there is no difference, makes a fool of himself every time he opens 
his, and it is wide open all the time. 

My school at the Art Students’ League has prospered in every way, save financially, 
attracting pupils from Japan to Judea and including English, French, Germans and the 
whole of North and South America, and some have learned a little, a number have taken 
to teaching what they cannot perform yet, though many have got married and more 
have failed to learn anything and left a profession they had no business to try to enter. 
But the financial side is all that counts and while money can be obtained in baskets full 
for anything except art—I do not mean for artless prize winners to loaf abroad or for 
uplifting associations here—I have to paddle my own canoe as best I can. I have al- 
most reached the harbour, never to cruise again, I am reaching it successfully and this 
some day will be recognized. I have learned also, mainly from my students who end- 
lessly experiment, some new methods of work. For example, in stopping out, instead 
of using liquid ground for a small space, as I have recommended, if a brush is dipped in 
turpentine and rubbed on a ball of solid ground, a mixture will be made with which the 
finest line can be drawn or the tiniest spaces stopped out. And it can be worked over 
and dries at once. A very good dry point has been invented by my most inventive pupil, 
Mr. Ziegler, who takes a safety razor blade, breaks off with pincers a narrow section 
which is extremely sharp at the ends, inserts this in a handle, and draws with it. The 
line made is remarkably sharp and clean and never seems to wear out nor the burr to 
break off while the tool can be handled with the greatest freedom, and if it breaks an- 
other point is formed by the breaking of it. But, after all, it is not really the tools, though 
the best should always be employed, but the way they are used and the brains to use 
them that count. 7 

Mr. E. S. Lumsden, who is an etcher, not an amateur or outsider, has published the 
only up-to-date and useful treatise on Etching issued in England since Short’s and Strang’s 
which are out-of-date. LLumsden’s book actually contains some references to American 
methods, and he even mentions, beside myself, one American Etcher, while clerical au- 
thorities like A. M. Hind can now use Lumsden when they never would refer to me, in 
those parts of the book where Lumsden gets his information from me. 


Etching societies, etching schools, etching dealers and collectors are multiplying fast, 
XXV 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


but I have not noted a new living etcher. Even loan exhibitions of etchings are being 
sent round the country on some sale or return scheme. But the same benevolent 
benefactors who are doing this good to the poor people are dumping, at the same or 
higher prices, chromos, colour prints, and all sorts of just as good mechanical reproduc- 
tions on them, the promoters being unable to distinguish either artistically or financially 
good from bad, to the incredible damage of the creative original Graphic Arts. But the 
world must be uplifted even if the artist is downtrodden. 

It looks too as if the inflated balloon of commercial etching will have its periodical 
burst again before long. And again for years the works of the real etchers of the past— 
the men in this book—will be alone sought for, collected and preserved. Now it is a 
toss-up who is collected, but there is no doubt who the true etchers are. If collectors 
trusted the very few other etchers who know and myself, they would not go wrong, but 
they prefer to trust those who have wares to sell, and some of them are not to be trusted. 
And as the book is going through the press I find that a group of ad. men, business men, 
and I suppose women, describing themselves as an Institute of Graphic Arts, are going 
to decide which are the best fifty American etchings of the year. I was asked to select 
twenty-five, and some one else another twenty-five, as though in the whole world fifty 
good etchings had been made in a year, and I was told it was good advertisement, and 
it is said it pays to advertise—but it has nothing to do with art. 

Poor Zorn has virtually vanished as a profitable investment, a proof that the knowledge 
of etchers, rather than the notions of business men and oil painters, should be accepted 
by amateurs, collectors, and etching societies. 

But Iam sure all the great etchers are now included in this book, and the right methods 
of work are described in it. And the art writers cannot prevail against it, or make people 
who practice etching, or understand etching, or any sort of art believe in them. But 
today this country is filled with faddists and fanatics, and even a fool may and can do 
harm, especially to the cultured, but even to the people. 

BROOKLYN, JULY 4, 10925. ; JOSEPH PENNELL 


CONTENTS 


GENERAL PREFACE | : : 5 : a: : : : : evi 
PREFACE ? : ; , : 4 : ; : : : lo aks 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . : : : : f 2 . al 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION . : : ; ; ; : , _ | Seal 
CONTENTS. ; : : : f : : : : : eax KV. 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . , ; P : : : i : Pes Xix 
CHAPTER I 

OF ETCHINGS : ; x ; ; ; ; , ; ; : ; I 
CHAPTER II 

OF THE MAKING OF ETCHINGS ; ; : : 2 ; : ; ety 


CHAPTER III 


OF THE COLLECTING OF ETCHINGS ., : 2 : : A ° . . 2I 


CHAPTER IV 


OF THE GREAT ETCHERS . ; : ; : é : 2 ; : A 27 
CHAPTER V 
OF CHARLES MERYON * : * : : - . : f ‘ : 31 


CHAPTER VI 


OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER. . A : ‘ ‘ ' , . ' 45 


CHAPTER VII 


OF REMBRANDT. P A , : : ; Ye Sig, 
CHAPTER VIII 
OF FOLLOWERS OF REMBRANDT AND OTHERS ; m ; A % = 4 137 


CHAPTER IX 


OF DURER  . : : : : : : ; : : TAT 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER X 


OF VAN DYCK 


CHAPTER XI 


OF WILLIAM BLAKE 


CHAPTER XII 


OF GOYA AND ROPS 


CHAPTER XIII 


OF J. M. W. TURNER ° . 


CHAPTER XIV 


OF SEYMOUR HADEN 


CHAPTER XV 


OF MODERN MEN 


CHAPTER XVI 


OF THE MATERIALS NECESSARY FOR MAKING AN ETCHING 


CHAPTER XVII 


OF COPPER PLATES AND OTHER PLATES 


CHAPTER XVIII 


OF ETCHING GROUNDS 


CHAPTER XIX 


OF GROUNDING AND PRINTING ROLLERS 


CHAPTER XX 


OF ETCHING NEEDLES ; . 


CHAPTER XXI 


OF SCRAPERS, BURNISHERS, ROULETTES 


XXVlil 


PAGE 


145 


153 


159 


173 


I8I 


190 


201 


207 


209 


25 


212 


212 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXII PAGE 


OF ACIDS : : : ° ° . , . . ° . . - 214 


CHAPTER XXIII 


OF PRESSES . é ; : : ‘ ; : ‘ : x : meOTG 


CHAPTER XXIV 


OF INK . . . . . . . e e ° . . . . 2 iL 7 
CHAPTER XXV 
OF PAPER . : : ; : - 4 : : . d , ots 


CHAPTER XXVI 


OF GROUNDING PLATES . : . : : : . : . ° 20 


CHAPTER XXVII 


OF DRAWING ON THE PLATE “ : : S : . ° . Ss vee! 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


OF BITING IN : : : e A : : : ; » 231 
CHAPTER XXIX 

OF CORRECTIONS IN BITING , é 6 A A 5 A . & 3 240 
CHAPTER XXX 

OF RE-GROUNDING : Q r F A A A 5 A ‘ ts 241 


CHAPTER XXXI 


OF DRY POINT ¢ é . : : . ° ° e . ° e242 


CHAPTER XXXII 


OF SAND PAPER AND AQUATINT . : . : - . ° ° see NS 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


OF MEZZOTINT ‘ : : : : : ; ° : : : go er tey, 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


OF COLOUR ETCHINGS 


CHAPTER XXXV 


OF MONOTYPES AND RELIEF PLATES . 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


OF PRINTING. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


OF TRIALS AND STATES 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


OF PUBLISHING PRINTS 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


OF THE PRESERVATION OF PRINTS 


CHAPTER XL 


CONTENTS 


OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM . 


CHAPTER XLI 


OF CATALOGUING 


CHAPTER XLII 


OF TEACHING ETCHING 


CHAPTER XLIII 


FINALLY TO ETCHERS 


INDEX . ° 


PAGE 


277 


2719 


281 


291 


207 


3°93 


3°9 


321 


325 


333 


337 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


ANDERS ZORN: THE TOAST 
Etching reproduced by process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: RIAULT THE ENGRAVER 


Dry point reproduced by process. Both on facing pages to show difference in handling 


A. LEGROS: PORTRAIT OF DALOU 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 


A. LEGROS: PROMENADE DU CONVALESCENTE 
Dry point reproduced by process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: JO 


Dry point. Engraved on wood by J. H. E. Whitney. Siren s Magazine, Vol. XVII, Ase 1879, 


engraving reproduced by process. 
ALBRECHT DURER: THE CANNON 
Engraving. Reproduced by process. 


REMBRANDT: THREE TREES 
Etching. Reproduced by process. 


Both on same page to show difference in line 


CHARLES MERYON: COLLEGE HENRI QUATRE 
Bitten line. Reproduced by Ringler in photogravure. 


CHARLES MERYON: THE MORGUE. 
Bitten line. Half tone process reproduction. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: STREET IN SAVERNE. FRENCH SET 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE UNSAFE TENEMENT. FRENCH SET . 5 . 6 
Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: BLACK LION WHARF. THAMES SERIES 
Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: WEARY 
Dry point. Reproduced by Ringler in pierre 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: ANNIE HADEN IN THE BIG HAT 
Bitten line and dry point. Reproduced by Ringler in photogravure. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: BIBI VALENTIN 
Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE BRIDGE. SECOND VENICE SET 


PAGE 
Xvl 


XVii 


Xx 


XXill 


The 


Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. By permission of Messrs. omdeeren & owdearell 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: DOORWAY. FIRST VENICE SET 


Bitten line, reinforced with printing. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler: By permission of the Fine 


Arts Society. 
J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE RIVA. FIRST VENICE SET 


AE 


oY 


4I 


79 


83 


Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. By permission of the Fine Arts Society. To show difference 


of artists’ work. 


F. DUVENECK: THE RIVA : 
Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: BEGGARS. SECOND VENICE SET 
Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. Early State. By permission of the Fine Arts Society. 
Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. Later State. do do 


XXX1 


87 


go 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


REMBRANDT: AMSTERDAM 


Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. Both on same page to show difference 
in the two artists’ technique 


WHISTLER: ZAANDAM 

Bitten line. Do. 

F. DUVENECK: THE RIALTO é 

Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 
REMBRANDT: THE MILL : 

Bitten line. Reproduced by half tone process. 

REMBRANDT: REMBRANDT’S MOTHER. 

Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 
REMBRANDT: THE GOLD WEIGHER’S FIELD : 
Bitten line and dry point. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 


REMBRANDT: SIX BRIDGE 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 


REMBRANDT: BEGGARS AT THE DOOR OF A HOUSE 
Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 


REMBRANDT: CHRIST PRESENTED TO THE PEOPLE 
Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 
REMBRANDT: THE THREE CROSSES 

Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 

VAN DYCK: PORTRAIT OF SNYDERS 

Bitten line. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 
NANTEUIL: PORTRAIT OF THE DUC DE MELLERAYE 


Line engraving. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 


WILLIAM BLAKE: AMERICA 


To show difference in portrait 
engraving and etching 


From Blake’s “ Jerusalem.’”’ Etched as wood block for relief printing, reproduced by process. 


F. GOYA: MALA NOCHE. FROM THE CAPRICES 
Aquatint. Reproduced by process. 


F. ROPS: DEVIL SOWING TARES OVER PARIS 
Aquatint and soft ground. Reproduced by process. 


J. M. W. TURNER. ST: CATHERINE’S HILL 


Bitten line. Guide for mezzotinter. Reproduced by process. 
Mezzotint finished plate. Reproduced by process. 


SEYMOUR HADEN: SUNSET IN IRELAND 

Dry point. Reproduced in photogravure by Ringler. 

SEYMOUR HADEN: BREAKING UP OF THE AGAMEMNON 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 

FELIX BUHOT: WESTMINSTER 

Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 

MAXIME LALANNE: RUE DES MARMOUSETS 

Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 

MAXIME LALANNE: CUSSET : 7 : . ° 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 


XXXil1 


PAGE 


95 


103 
107 
III 
II5 
119 
123 
129 


133 


151 


17 


165 
169 


179 


185 
189 
IQI 
193 


193 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


BRACQUEMOND: PORTRAIT OF E. DE GONCOURT 


Bitten and engraved line. Reproduction of process. Early state. 
Finished plate. 


W. STRANG: SWINEHERD é A : : A : , 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. From Collection in New York Public Library. 
W. STRANG: PORTRAIT OF R. KIPLING : : 3 ; é 
Bitten line. Reproduced by process. From Collection in New York Public Library. 
A. LEPERE: L’INVENTOIRE 

Bitten line. Reproduced by process. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: LONDON OUT OF MY WINDOW 

Soft ground. Reproduction of destroyed plate by Ringler, photogravure. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: LONDON STUDIES BY VARIOUS METHODS, ST. PAUL’S OVER 
WATERLOO : - 5 ; : r 

Bitten line. Photogravure from the destroyed plate by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: LONDON FROM MY WINDOW 

Dry point. Photogravure by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: ST PAUL’S 

Roulette. Photogravure by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: ST. PAUL’S IN WAR TIME, THE SEARCH LIGHTS 
Sand paper ground. Photogravure by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: SONG OF THE SEARCH LIGHTS, LONDON IN WAR TIME 
Resin aquatint. Photogravure by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: THE SHOT TOWER 

Aquatint, dust ground. Photogravure by Ringler. 

JOSEPH PENNELL: THE SHOT TOWER AND THE BRIDGE 

Mezzotint drawn with tools, original manner. Photogravure by Ringler. 


JOSEPH PENNELL: WREN’S CITY é : 
Mezzotint. Scraped modern manner. Photogravure by Ringler. 


XXXill 


PAGE 


199 


229 


235 
247 
251 
257 
261 
265 
277 


275 


, gl 











OF ETCHINGS CHAPTER I 


AMERTON, in Eiching and Etchers—and with all its faults it is till now, 
the most important work on the subject '—discusses Etching under several 
heads, and it is just as well to discuss him after a lapse of fifty years. How 
many other modern technical art books have lasted so long? He begins by 
comparing Etching with Oil and Water Colour Painting, and Drawing in Monochrome. 
Such comparisons are futile—there is no possible comparison to be made—the Etcher 
who should try for lines in oil paint, or tone in etching, save in aquatint and mezzotint, 
which Hamerton was not discussing, has no knowledge of the scope or limitations of these 
arts. Nor is there any comparison to be drawn, as he does, between Etching and Pen 
Drawing, or Etching and Lithography. Unless the etcher gives to his work, or gets out of 
his methods, their distinctive qualities, he is not their master—not an artist. In discussing 
the technique of the Graphic Arts, with which Hamerton had but the passing familiarity 
of the amateur, he speaks of Etching being quite as autographic as Lithography. Etch- 
ing is not autographic at all, Lithography is the only autographic, graphic art, and 
lately I have seen that charged against it by another amateur. A lithographic print 
is an original—the multiplication of the artist’s design. Every line that he draws is 
printed as he draws it. All this is fully explained in the volume on Lithography in this 
series. An Etching is a print from the etcher’s lines, scratched or drawn on a plate, 
through an acid-resisting ground, then bitten or dug into the plate, and finally printed 
from it: the lines in the print are absolutely different from those drawn on the plate. 

Hamerton further discusses the relation of Etching to Pen Drawing; rightly used 
there is no relation. An etched line, and a pen drawn line, should show immediately, 
to the intelligent, what they are, how they are made, by which method. The artist 
—or rather, the clever one, and the swindler, can make a pen-drawing, put washes on 
it to imitate the tones of printing ink, spatter it with drawing ink to imitate foul biting, 
have a photogravure made of it so well as almost to deceive the elect, and, if that is 
his aim, scribble a few lines with a needle on the plate, and he should have a very good 
imitation etching. But the man who would go through all this to deceive, could make 
an etching of the subject with half the trouble, delay, expense, and certain subsequent 
exposure of his deceit and tricks, as has happened. If such an etcher took to forging 
bank notes, he could make governments sick. I have often wondered why it has not 
been done. : 

Hamerton’s most absurd comparison is with “‘ Black Lead.”’ Any artist who wants 
to get the effect of “Black Lead,” can get it by Soft Ground Etching, which is described 
in this book, as soft ground etchings are made with lead pencil or charcoal, and give in 
the print the effect of that sort of drawing. 


1 Though Professor Singer in his excellent Moderne Graphik never mentions it, nor Hamerton 
either. Equally—even more important—was Hamerton’s work in the Portfolio edited by himself 
and published by Seeley, to which almost all etchers contributed: a delightful and remunerative con- 
trast to the blackmail, if you don’t give me a print or loan me a plate I won’t notice you, proces- 
block illustration methods of the present. 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


There is another section devoted to comparison with Wood-Engraving. In this 
there are some valuable hints and suggestions. Hamerton rightly objects to the modern 
wood-engraver copying etchings—a most useless labour—though marvellous re- 
sults were obtained by American wood-engravers thirty-five years ago. But all this 
copying is now abandoned, and rightly, for process, mechanical engraving, which does 
the work better. Wood-engraving is an art for original artists, and has a character of 
its own; to prove that the wood-engraver, who is a master craftsman, can express 
himself perfectly by various methods, it is only necessary to refer to the work of Auguste 
Lepére: his etchings do not look like his lithographs, nor do his lithographs resemble 
his wood-engravings; all retain their proper technical qualities. So do mine, I think, 
and Whistler’s certainly did. Hamerton’s comparisons are blunders no artist would 
have made, but he was an amateur—and fell in a pit. 

In fact, the only one of his comparisons which is of any real importance, or even 
relevance, is that between Etching and Line Engraving. But even here is no similarity. 
Etching, as Hamerton says, is done passionately: Line engraving, I say, ploddingly. 
Again he blunders and flounders ponderously—loving to discuss and analyze, com- 
pare and expound, for the sake of discussion—the result does not matter. 

Hamerton points out truly that some of the greatest original work in the Graphic 
Arts is found in the work of line engravers from the time of Diirer. He says that now 
it has fallen by the way, because it is “‘so expensive’’—he talks like a canny editor 
or cheap publisher. That is not the reason; but because line engraving fell into the 
clutches of the middle man—the hack line engraver, who charged more for grinding 
out one plate after Diirer than that artist probably was paid for all his own engravings. 
Diirer did not mind how much time he and his pupils spent over their plates, so long 
as they got what they wanted artistically ; the modern steel engraver, copyist, makes 
a money contract before he touches a plate, by the inch or the year. Some of the very 
best reproductive engravers, those who worked for Turner’s Liber Studiorum, were very 
modestly remunerated, from six to twelve guineas a plate, and even then Turner fought 
them and tried to jew them down. 

The greatest triumphs of modern steel engravers have been in England. The re- 
sults are not art, but plodding, sticking at it, muddling through, by which means a steel 
engraving is ground out. There have been any number of these people and mezzotint 
and stipple engravers of the same type—amazing in their way. But Great Britain 
has never produced a supreme etcher, and I do not believe ever will; it is not in the 
nature or temperament of the people. And if a real etcher—an occasional one— 
appears, he is not recognized by his fellows, whether native or foreign, during his life- 
time—though his followers, when he has any, reap his rewards. 

During Whistler’s, Haden’s and Legros’ lifetime, there were no etchers admitted 
to the English Royal Academy, but any number of reproductive engravers were made 
members. Whistler was but little encouraged by the leading dealers of England—his 
aping imitators are boomed and lauded, boosted—financially to the skies. 

Now that metal engraving has for the time ceased, the followers, imitators of 


4 





J. M. N. WHISTLER: JO. DRY POINT. ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY 
J. H. E. WHITNEY 


The fame of the American School of Wood Engraving was made by works like this reproduction of 
Whistler’s Dry Point of Jo, printed in Scribner’s Magazine; incidentally it appeared in the first 
appreciative article on Whistler published in America, written by W. C. Brownell, who however 
described it as an Etching Joe when it was a Dry Point of Jo, Whistler’s model, and called her the 
artist’s brother; she was scarce that. In the same article and in other articles in contemporary mag- 
azines were many other wood engravings, by many other wood engravers, after Whistler and many 
other etchers. The engravings were wonderful. But it was toil, time, and trouble thrown away, not 
altogether, however, for the prints will live. This then was the only practical method of reproduction 
and printing at the same time with letter press. The design was photographed on the boxwood block, 
and this photograph, in reverse, the engraver cut into relief on the wood, that is, every line was left 
in relief; to do this the engraver with infinite skill and endless patience cut away by cutting on each 
side of them everything on the surface of the block except the artist’s lines, which were left in relief. 
Whistler drew with his dry point, scratched each line, on the copper, simply, expressively, quickly ; the 
engraver reproduced every line the artist drew freely, by two cuts, two lines or spaces one on each 
side of it with his graver laboriously. 

Whistler probably made the portrait in a few hours—though he may have taken days—that we 
shall never know, but we do know that it took Whitney weeks to engrave this block and to engrave 
it marvellously, yet it was not really a reproduction but a translation, so was similar work by Cole and 
other contemporary engravers who worked for Scribner’s, The Century, and Harper’s, and who made 
reputations for themselves and the magazines by their work, as the engravers of the Early Nineteenth 
Century had done in England, France, and Germany, superseding metal engraving, which could not 
be printed on the same press with type, by wood engraving, which could. Then came Photo Engraving, 
by which the drawn or engraved line was photographed on to a sensitized metal plate, and the lines 
so photographed, covered with an acid resisting ground, and etched into relief; that is, the acid did 
the work of the wood engraver, and in this rare case did it better then the highly trained engraver, 
as well as more simply and cheaply. This print is a photo engraving of Whitney’s wood engraving, 
twice removed, therefore, from the original. Artists liked the results, too, better; they were closer to 
the original, and the early photo engraving in the American magazines was better than the late wood 
engravings. The engravers after this either engraved the works they wanted, did original work for 
themselves, or copied paintings, though most of them, alas, disappeared or became hacks, for they were 
not most of them original creative artists. That there still was work to be done in wood engraving was 
proved by the later success of Cole and Wolf here, Lepére and Florian in France. Alas, however, to-day 
the American Art Editor cares no longer for the wonderful art of wood engraving, it costs too much for 
him—art has nothing to do with it, cost and hustle are his ideals, and the artist wood engravers 
of the world have fallen on evil times. Their work will live, however. The work of the photo engraver 
now is mostly inferior, not only to the wood engraver of the past, but to the photo engraving of the 
past. It is a strange but ever recurring fact that when a new method of multiplying arts or crafts is 
invented, artists capable of carrying it out appear, or rather the new method appeals to capable 
artists. Just as the best books ever printed, were printed immediately after the introduction of moy- 
able type. To-day we are ignorant of what has been done in printing and engraving, don’t care, think 
we do the best work when we do the worst, and have lost mostly all sense of beauty, art, decora- 
tion, craftsmanship gone dry, dreary, decadent, diseased, dull. 





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JOR. 


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DURER: THE CANNON. ENGRAVING. REMBRANDT: THREE 
TREES. ETCHING. COMPARISON BETWEEN ETCHING AND 
ENGRAVING 


Haden to prove that etching was a vital art, and engraving a lifeless one, enlarged a small bit from an 
etching and an engraving. He proved his point but not fairly; the bit of etched work explained itself, 
the piece of the engraving did not. But it has seemed to me best—in landscape to place two famous 
plates on the same page and then compare them and the lines with which they were drawn by two 
masters—engraved and etched rather. 

The difference of technique is best seen in the sky. Diirer’s is made with a single line simply, firmly, 
boldly drawn, dug in the metal; Rembrandt’s by a multitude of swirls, cross hatchings—scratches— 
long and short lines all made with the utmost freedom—both artists got their effect—though I have 
said in the chapter on Rembrandt what I think of this plate—both artists worked in an absolutely 
different way. But each in his own way, and keeping one’s character in one’s work is the charm of 
work. 

The distance, the hill side in both are not so different, both artists have darkened the sky to lighten 
the ground and Diirer has drawn the distance more simply and expressively than Rembrandt, though 
this is the best part of the Three Trees. The foreground in both is beastly, there is no real observa- 
tion—I do not know which is the worse—Diirer’s cannon is fine so are the figures—Rembrandt’s 
are cheap. And as for Diirer’s one big tree and Rembrandt’s three, they are both vile; nevertheless 
these two famous plates prove in themselves my point, and show better than I can describe the differ- 
ence between etching and engraving though I could easily find a worse engraving and a better etching. 
But one shows masterly plodding in execution, the other masterly freedom of handling. I have since 
writing this gone through the authorities. Some say The Cannon is etched, some engraved. To me 
it looks like an engraving. Feels like it—any way it is fine and the reproductions show the differ- 
ence of the two masters’ work. 

After the artist’s design is drawn on or transferred to the plate a steel engraving is made with burins, 
gravers, gouges of different shapes held in the palm of the hand. The artist uses different sized 
tools for different sized lines, and with amazing skill, and certainty of hand, he pushes the point 
from him, and digs his design into the metal plate with it. Any ridges of metal thrown up by it 
and adhering to the side of the lines are cut off with a scraper and the design cut and dug into the 
metal, prints with great sharpness and clearness. Heavy lines are made by digging deeper into the 
metal with broader tools, lighter lines, by using less force and narrower tools. Line engraving is a 
slow, laborious and most exacting method of work, requiring enormous skill and endless patience.. 
In the etching Rembrandt used his needle held more or less vertically with the greatest liberty and 
lightness, drawing with the same sureness and accuracy as Diirer but with absolute freedom. 

The difference of handling can be best studied in the sky and middle distance. Diirer got his darks 
with one strong line, Rembrandt with many weaker ones. The deeper the lines are dug or bitten 
into the plate, the more ink they hold, and the blacker they are. 


Norte: I believe now that The Cannon was etched, but that the lines were drawn with a graver and not 
with a point, and that the plate was mostly bitten, only once. That would explain it. Why, for exam- 
ple the lines look like engraved lines and not bitten lines—why there is little rich depth in the blacks. 
Rembrandt’s lines in the Three Trees are utterly different—as lines—the way they are drawn and their 
variety—and so are the blacks in his plate different in quality and colour from Diirer’s. I have shown 
the two plates together and the difference should be apparent—and my explanation plain. 


Note To Tutrp Epition: My original statement has been refuted—that Diirer’s “The Cannon” is 
an engraving by “‘an authority” who never read the above note—So I shall leave it to fool some other 
f{— f— f{— for it proves he has not read the book he reviewed. This is the way with some reviewers— 
others only extract the illustrations and ignore the text, they are too ignorant to criticise. 


Io 


































































































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OF ETCHINGS 


Haden and Legros, are welcomed to the Academic fold, but that is the way of 
Academies. 

Hamerton ends his comparisons by pointing out that ‘‘the strong points of etch- 
ing are freedom, facility, power.’”’ He omits to say the etcher must possess them; 
and he finishes by saying its weakness is “tone.” No etcher, great etcher, however, 
tried for tone. Etching is a line method, but the great etchers have suggested more 
colour, tone, and values with a few lines, than the little duffers have failed to do with 
endless, useless, honest, soulful, stupid, patient bungling. 

In a sea of platitudes and commonplaces one comes across grains of great sense 
in Hamerton’s book: it is really in technical matters that he is hopelessly wrong or 
completely out of date. And he says rightly in his chapter on “The Difficulties and 
Facilities of Etching” that “‘it is extremely difficult to detach manual from intellectual 
qualities,’ and that “the quality of an etched line depends on its meaning and 
that alone.’’ He does not, as Ruskin meant, mean inner, spiritual, soulful, precious, 
or other hidden meaning ; but that the etched line made by the etcher, so it will print, 
should mean a tree, a house, a man, a cloud, or some part of these objects. Now this 
can be easily proven. ‘Take, as has been done, a portion of a steel engraving, and en- 
large it; and take a similar bit from an etching. The former is formal and meaning- 
less; the latter is full of meaning and explains the bit enlarged. If a bad etching is 
chosen, the lines will probably be more meaningless than those of a good line engraving. 

And Hamerton’s statements about the highest skill in etching are memorable. 
This, he says, “cannot be reached at all by the average aspirant. Thousands have 
attempted etching. In this multitude you cannot find thirty first-rate etchers— 
there may be ten. If there is any human pursuit wholly inaccessible to men of ordi- 
nary powers, it is etching.” It is to be noted he never refers to women—yet women 
now run etching societies, teach etching, lecture on etching, even make etchings. But 
there never has been a great woman etcher—not one woman is included in Hamerton’s 
book. And Hamerton dares to say that ‘“‘for ladies to take up etching is a delusive 
fashion.’”’ Haden remarks that, ‘it has come to be spread abroad that etching, the 
most difficult of the arts, is fitted only for the amusement of the amateur.” 

“Patient industry,” Hamerton continues, ‘“‘and some imitative faculty may pro- 
duce a passable engraving, long training an academic painting; but nobody can be 
taught to make fine etchings or fine poems.”’ Yet in Great Britain the Government, 
and the National Academy in America, employ etcher academicians, to turn out etchers, 
male and female, from Royal Colleges and National Schools and in Germany there are 
eminent Herr Professors, not a few, engaged in the same work. In America we are all 
etchers, but here as has been said, “‘all our geese are swans and all our swans are geese.” 
The fact that there is supposed to be big money in it has nothing to do with the matter. 

Etching is not putting down lines, as someone, who cannot do it himself, tells you 
to, or as he does it, but putting down lines for one’s self that will print, that mean some- 
thing to others, others who can see. Not learned people, cultured people, critical people, 
but people who can understand etching. Show an etching to the average parson, 


13 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


professor, critic, general, or—the best test of all—painter. It conveys nothing to him; 
there is, however, no reason why it should. Great etchers do not work for such people, 
nor have they any desire to educate them. If lines, as lines, mean nothing to the 
spectator, he is wasting his time looking at them, though the correct thing to do. 

Yet it is in this vital, passionate art that the amateur and the artless are nowadays 
entangled, intrigued, and abandoned, with a collection or a diploma. Haden also says 
in About Etching that “ the revival of the art has done harm as it has led many to mis- 
apprehend, and in practice to abuse, the true aim and end of etching.” 

If, too, the mechanical side of etching has no attraction, if the biting does not 
fascinate him, and the printing ravish him, the artist will never be an etcher—he is not 
even an artist, for etching has always fascinated the greatest artists. To-day the little 
painters are turning to it—encouraged and applauded by the little critics—not because 
they must etch but because they hope it will help them to pay the rent. 

A tribe of etchers, tribe is the word, have also arisen who with almost clumsy 
stupidity, copy the stupidity of the successful. Daumier, Forain, Steinlen, Leech, are 
all lumped together and their mannerisms copied. All these artists could or can draw 
though sometimes clumsily, save Leech, the most popular, who could not. Therefore 
the more clumsily, the more perfunctorily, the more stupidly a drawing, an etching, 
or a lithograph can be made the more it should be prized. ‘The artists I have men- 
tioned exist despite their mannerisms and blunders—the moderns are praised because 
they crib their failures or carelessness. 

One cause of failure to differentiate between good and bad etching, good and bad 
art of any sort, is the appalling and incredible ignorance of present-day art critics, who 
mostly have no technical knowledge, nor to make up for such lamentable ignorance, 
the power to express themselves by brilliant, memorable, convincing writing backed by 
their own opinion—an opinion respected, feared, looked up to, looked forward to—by 
artists. 

Another point is that the difference between good and bad art is so slight that few 
can distinguish it. Most critics to-day have no opinions even of their own; they patter 
like parrots taking their tips from others with no ideas in their heads. 

A man who is ignorant of etching, who is not an etcher, cannot criticize etchings ; 
he can, and often does, blither about them, he can deal in them openly, or on the quiet, 
catalogue them, boom them, always the wrong ones, unless they and their makers have 
been recognized by the ages, and even then he blunders. He may have “experienced 
art”’—the latest cant—but as Whistler said, a life passed among pictures makes not 
an artist or even a critic, ‘‘else the policeman at the National Gallery might assert 
himself.”” The critic does, and makes himself a spectacle. 

Hamerton admits all this (I do not mean Whistler’s statement—Whistler was to 
him the red rag). But he says: ‘‘No person outside practical art can criticize, 
and no practical person living in a narrow clique can criticize justly.” 

But the greatest critics of the past have always been narrow artists; in the present 
they are artists, although they mostly no longer trouble to write; they will be in the 


14 


OF ETCHINGS 


future, if there are any ‘“‘art critics,” for whom I with others see no necessity—an 
American advertising writer would serve the purpose better and be more interesting— 
unless a great artist and great writer and a forceful man—the rarest combination— 
appeared as critic, and he is not conspicuous in the public press, except as a boomer 
of exhibitions, the present-day tribe of critics are worthless—or harmful for ‘even 
a fool can do harm.” | 

It is possible, as Hamerton says, ‘‘ to be a connoisseur without having etched a 
plate, that is a collector, a cataloguer, a compiler, an editor, but no one can be an au- 
thority on etching, or even oil paint, who is not an artist.” Still he may be on the staff 
of the most important organ of public opinion or profess the fine arts at a university. 
But the likes and dislikes of such people, and the public too, are not worth the paper 
they are printed on, to artists, unless they—the newspaper critics—praise them; nor 
are the opinions the people utter; they ‘know nothing about art, but they know what 
they like,” or rather what they are told to like, for the public has no opinions, no ideas, 
no courage, or there would not have been this damnable commercial shop-keeping war. 
We hear to-day that there is a great boom in etchings. There is a sort of one. It was 
only recently that you could buy a Rembrandt or a Whistler much cheaper than the 
work of the modern genius—but the bottom has fallen out of the bbom—and copper has 
advanced—and many of them will take to some legitimate means of trade—like painting. 

Now there never was a real, a genuine interest in etching any more than there 
ever was an art age. Rembrandt’s, and Diirer’s prints were cheap enough when made— 
and few wanted them. And as to their popularity, even now, in artistic America 
with our hundred millions, it is very difficult for a good etcher to sell fifty copies of 
a plate—and Whistlers are still to be had—though he never printed more than one 
hundred proofs from any plate. 

As for the amateur, the real amateur, he is one who loves prints and learns about 
them, treasures them for their own sake, their own beauty, not because they are rare, 
or the artist was mad, or only made failures, or had ideas he could not express, or be- 
cause he did not know his trade, or wanted “‘to make big money quick.”’ 

But it seems to me I am not altogether writing “About Etchers and Etching,” 
but somewhat about what they are not. 

A great etching by a great etcher is a great work of art displayed on a small piece 
of paper, expressed with the fewest vital, indispensable lines, of the most personal 
character: an impression, a true impression of something seen, something felt by the 
etcher, something that means a great deal to him, which can be expressed only by 
etching, something he hopes someone may understand and care for, as he, the artist, 
does—for it is all his own work—and if not, well, it does not matter; he pulls a few 
proofs, knowing them to be good, he smashes the plate, feeling like a murderer, and 
then, some connoisseur comes along and tries to get, what he had not the brains to 
appreciate, when he could have had it, and now can never have it at all. 

If even commercial collecting was sensibly carried out, and there are signs of it, 
the collector dealer, or the dealer collector would collect not prints but drawings. He 


15 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


wants things for their rarity, and for a rise in value: a drawing is always unique; but he 
prefers a print which because it was bad, or because the other copies have been de- 
stroyed, happens to be unique. But there is no accounting for the collector. He 
prefers an early inferior state, which is rare, to a later and better, which is common; 
he wants a proof with an accidental scratch on it, which the artist immediately removes. 
He wants in fact mostly all those things in a print which the artist doesn’t want. But 
then that is the way with most collectors, for whom there is no accounting. But the 
intelligent collector and the intelligent dealer are absolutely necessary to the intelligent 
etcher, and it is this intelligent codperation that has enabled us to carry on the art. 


16 








OF THE MAKING OF ETCHINGS CHAPTER II 


HE artist who can make a great etching makes it because he must, because 

he feels that the subject can only be rendered by etching, and he goes at it, 

seeing before him in golden lines, on the bare black-grounded plate, the design 

as he hopes it will print in black lines on white paper. The idea, the impres- 
sion he has, is so strong that he does the plate straight off from nature, or out of his 
head. He does not fumble around making sketches and drawings for it, apparently 
as studies, actually machines, which he hopes may sell, or working stodgily day after 
day at it. Ifa great artist makes a fine sketch on paper, full of vigor and vitality in 
every line, he cannot copy it without losing all that vitality—he must do it straight on 
the copper or never do it. If this is not in him, he is not and never will be an etcher, 
though he may be a most successful person. ‘The real etcher goes at the drawing on 
the plate with as much fury as care, and dreads the biting and fears the printing, though 
they. fascinate him, as much as the drawing; fcr it is all an uncertainty; the greatest 
etchers have made the greatest messes. It is only the plodding manufacturer of plates 
whose etchings are ground out, not fought out, whose prints are striven for by collectors 
and dealers; the real etcher never really bothers about such people, though all 
etchers have used dealers wisely for their own profit. The modern celebrity works 
up or down to them. Of course the true etcher likes to sell his prints, and he hopes 
they will sell, and he asks the aid of dealers to sell them, but that is not the reason 
why he makes them. 

Most modern etchers and societies of etchers are made, not born. They are made 
by schools, dealers, and charters. ‘The modern etcher mostly makes etchings to make 
money. 

Owing to the present boom a tribe of etchers has arisen who can’t draw, can’t 
bite, can’t print; but by getting photography and other people to do as much as pos- 
sible for them, can make money and a temporary notoriety ; but money is what they 
want; because after years of toil Whistler did get a living wage from his etchings “for 
the knowledge of a lifetime,”’ these parasites want a fortune at once, regarding etching 
as a swift and sure way to win it, having sometimes failed at something else. They, 
however, like other nasty insects, die almost as soon as they are born, and the only 
people to blame are those who create them and encourage them; and though they 
make money, that has nothing to do with making etchings, which are made because 
the etcher must express himself by etching—because he loves the art yet fears it, and 
for the pleasure he gets out of making prints. 

Though all these things are commonplaces in all real art work, to all real artists, 
there is so little real art, there are so few real artists, so few real art lovers it is worth 
while to repeat them. 


19 









plese ’ 


LECTING 


: 


i 





OF THE COLLECTING OF ETCHINGS CHAPTER III 


TCHINGS are collected for two reasons, and by two classes of people. 

The first collect etchings because they love to, because they care to. 

The second because it is the correct thing to do so. 

The real collector loves to hunt for prints in artists’ studios, in auction 
rooms, in dealers’ galleries, in boxes and portfolios at second-hand shop doors, and 
when he has got them for his own, he loves to turn them over, to carefully mount and 
accurately catalogue them. Each has a story of pursuit and of capture as interesting, 
often, as the print. 

There are curators, keepers, and directors. Some curate as a business as a means 
of making a living, usually eked out by other means. Some keep, or get their posts 
by examinations or promotions. Others by accident or influence. Others are genuine 
directors who not only direct their galleries but the public, and encourage artists by 
collecting judiciously modern as well as old prints and back up their opinions by making 
collections of their own. 

There are dealers who have the love of the chase, whose delight is, in some out 
of the way corner, to find a treasure; and, if they are willing to part with it for a very 
high price, if by chance they have picked it up for a very low one, they are—this sort 
of dealers—as keen about their prints as collectors. 

Other dealers are genuine collectors. Two names—for they are gone—may be 
mentioned: Avery and Keppel. ‘These men did in every way, far more to encourage 
etching and etchers than all the pompous pedants who have written about it, and 
themselves. Avery and Keppel, it was found too, had enriched libraries and print 
rooms by the Collections they left. Not like some other much advertised collectors 
did they sell their collections, or allow them to be sold before or after their death, or 
pave their way to heaven by advertising what they are going to do with their prints 
after they shall be done laying up treasures on earth. 

These intelligent dealers love to fight for and pay for the fierce struggle of the 
auction room, and the triumph of possession that comes with it. 

But your present-day collector is at times a quite different sort of person. He 
buys etchings as an investment. He is at times, he thinks, a sharp shrewd investor, 
but if he exercised no more brains in his dealings on the Stock Exchange than he 
does in the dealers’ shops he patronizes, he would land in the Bankruptcy Court. 

Others simply buy etchings because it is the correct thing. They order a print before 
it is made, or published; it is as correct to have it, as a white undervest, or yellow 
gloves, or any other fashionable article, and it is bought just because in a certain set 
the owners do not dare to be without it; and the people who make such things, sell such 
things, buy such things for such ends, do so to advertise themselves for their own profit 
—for there is as much commercialism among artists as among the commercial classes. 

Certain etchers now simply manufacture etched plates, with or without a photo- 
graphic basis, with or without remarques, broad-margins, artists’ signatures, or other 
baits, for the benefit of such collectors. Societies are started for them and everything 


23 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


is done in some quarters to encourage them. ‘There never was such an interest, such 
a boom—a better term—as there is to-day in prints, artistic or photographic, but 
there are no more real etchers than there were fifty years ago. There are fewer and 
there is no real boom either. 

There are many etching societies, but there are not so many etchers as societies. 
The whole affair is a commercial proposition. For some reason, a fictitious commercial, 
and a sort of sanctimonious respect, is paid to a piece of paper on which a few lines 
have been printed from a scratched or bitten copper plate. Their merit, or want of 
merit, does not matter. Like the Order of the Garter there is no merit about it. It 
is really only the same sort of respect that is paid to another piece of engraved and 
printed paper labelled fifty francs, five pounds or ten dollars by the same sort of people. 
This sort of collector collects because he hopes he is making a good investment, be- 
cause he thinks it correct. But out of this collecting for profit’s sake, for vanity’s 
sake, good may—and sometimes does—come. It is certainly infinitely better that a 
man or woman should find it more amusing to chase a print around town, than a ball 
around a field; and there is just as much, or may be more walking exercise to be had 
running from studio to shop and to auctions, and more brains in this way may be de- 
veloped than by driving a ball over a net. It is certainly a good thing to start print 
rooms, but it is an absurdity to crowd them immediately with prints: a print collection 
should grow so slowly that those who study it may know and understand the prints 
in it. It is a good thing to start lectureships and professorships of the Graphic Arts, 
provided the lecturers and professors know what they are talking about, and com- 
mand the respect of those who practise these Arts. It is a good thing to have good 
honest dealers about ; but some are ignorant or dishonest. Others know every state 
of every plate, but can’t tell if it is good or bad, by looking at it, or anything about it 
unless it is in a catalogue. Others are too superior to know anything but the price of 
motor cars and the states of artless prints or numbers in artful catalogues. The etcher 
is a necessity to attract people to their shops, but their encouragement of his art com- 
mences after an artist’s death mostly. It is an abomination to start etching and en- 
graving schools and fill students’ heads with the idea that they can all make etchings 
and sell them to collectors—and make fortunes. Some of the teachers have never 
etched, others can’t draw—and I know of a school where there is no press. 

If the collector really cares and really collects, he will learn ail these things very 
soon, learn that there are a few things he must learn. Whether he is going to collect 
prints because he loves to have them round him, to look at them, to show them to 
others. Then he will learn, first, whether it is the subject or artist which interests 
him, or whether it is the state, or the rarity of the print, whether, when he has learned 
the difference, he wants a good proof, or whether an electrotype of the subject gives 
him equal pleasure. The great difficulty is what he shall collect. Artists and dealers 
want him to collect their works, or the works of those they are interested in—their 
school, or their clique, or—well, themselves—and nobody else. And in these the col- 
lector may have no interest whatever. Scheming shop-keepers will work off on him 


24 


OF THE COLLECTING OF ETCHINGS 


the productions of their docile hacks and tame etchers. If they cannot do so, the work 
of these tame etchers will be found, in a few weeks after it is published, in auction 
sales, bringing more than the published price of the unsold copies still in the dealers’ 
portfolios. Of course no one compels a collector to collect in this fashion, but he often 
does—one kind of collector—and one kind of dealer gives him every encouragement to 
do so. 

But the right sort of collector, if he has it in him, can collect intelligently, and 
wisely, and well, and cheaply, but he must know, and feel, and see—and he will find 
intelligent dealers to help him. Some of the most interesting hours of my life have 
been passed in talk with collectors, curators and dealers, in their homes, their galleries 
and their shops, where new prints were shown and old prints were again looked at, and 
we all gained knowledge by relating our experiences and comparing our prints. 

I have lived through two so-called booms in etching—the second will be over 
before the war is finished—and many dealers, etchers, and collectors will vanish with it. 
We have all been too successful. That is finished. But there will come a more rational, 
a more sensible, a more intelligent period, though I shall hardly see it. But great work 
will still be done in etching. 

The armistice came suddenly and etching—commercial etching—profited. 

But the good etchers survived. 


25 











OF THE GREAT ETCHERS CHAPTER IV 
INTRODUCTION 


INCE the world began there have only been two supreme etchers—Rembrandt 

and Whistler. I am not sure there have even been two—but I am sure the 

latter artist is the greater etcher. I shall have to drag in several other lesser 

etchers, because in some way they have done something, because they were 
etchers—a few were great, but not of the greatest. 

The reason why these two artists occupy the places they do is because they em- 
ployed—Whistler more, Rembrandt less—their genius, and the art of etching in the 
right way :—That is, for the expression of their ideas, or their impressions, in the most 
perfect manner, and this means with the most vital, as well as the fewest lines, and these 
are the foundation of great etching. The greatest etchings being then the result of 
the choice of the fewest and the most passionate lines, there are artists who are artists, 
painters, sculptors, but not etchers, for their line, as line, is of no value, and if half 
the lines were omitted from their plates the results would be better. Others, whether 
they use a single or multiple point, do not draw lines with it, but paint with it, make 
tones with it; and this tone work is carried still further, to a ridiculous end, in 
the so-called colour etchings now published widely. Artists sign these reproductions, 
but I believe, from what has been told me, have little else, save pocketing their royal- 
ties, to do with most of them. For a few years a whole army of etchers who never 
made, at any rate never showed, an etched plate, in black and white, signed endless 
numbers of these colour prints. The perfection and rapidity with which they ap- 
peared proved that the artists had no trouble to make them, while etchers have in- 
finite difficulties with each plate. 

As for line,—what is meant by it,—is expressive line, not a scrawl or a fluke, but a 
line so drawn on the plate and so bitten and so printed that every bit of it has life and 
meaning and character—in the print—and a series of such lines make a great etching: 
a few lines so drawn make a great picture. Many may be so drawn that they are mean- 
ingless. 

The lines of the greatest etchers are not only in themselves of supreme beauty, 
but drawn with supreme technical skill. For a great etching: is an everlasting proof, 
a self-evident proof, that a great etcher is a great technician, little as that is understood, 
or cared about to-day, little as the cataloguing curator, or the intrigued collector 
understands it, or the blundering, bungling “painter etcher,”’ for that matter—a 
blundering, bungling name invented by Haden. 

The drawing and placing of the lines on the plate is a part of the making of a great 
etching, and in the biting of the plate there is as much art as in the drawing of it, while 
the whole is crowned by the printing, and all great etchers have been great printers 
and their own printers, and the greatest printer of etchings who ever lived was J. M. N. 
Whistler,—that I know, just as I know he carried the art of printing further, in the right 
way, than Rembrandt did—and so carried on tradition. 

Now Rembrandt’s etchings may have, in printing, been as rich and luminous as 


29 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Whistler’s, when they were printed; to-day they are mostly dry and pale and weak. 
Either, then, they were always, in printing, dry and pale and weak, or they have become 
so; anyway, they are surpassed by Whistler’s. What Whistler’s work will look like 
in three hundred years, how it will stand the strain of time and collectors, who shall 
say? Will the richness we now love fade, and the depth beyond depth of tone decay, 
dry to dust? Well, we have seen his prints in their perfection, and they are more 
wonderful than Rembrandt’s. 

I know it has become the fashion to decry skill and thought and care in printing, 
to decry printing altogether, to decry art and laud clumsiness to-day. It does not 
matter. The artist, who is an etcher, will pay no attention to such artless prattle, by 
artless preachers and stodgy, incompetent, ignorant plodders; but shutting himself 
up with his press will pull his own proofs, trying to make the next better than the last. 
If he has not this love for his work, this delight in it, this excitement over each proof, 
he is not an etcher and never will be. 


30 








OF CHARLES MERYON CHAPTER V 


S to modern etchers, I am not going to discuss living men, but I shall dis- 

cuss modern men. But the etcher whose name is most in men’s mouths, 

who is most imitated, is a modern, Meryon. That is why I speak of him 

first. Now “‘Meryon,” as Whistler said, “was not a great artist,” but he 

was a great find, for two or three collector dealers, or dealer collectors. They got up a 
corner in him, and Meryon was, I believe, the first etcher since Rembrandt to whom 
Stock Exchange methods were applied. The merit of his plates is nothing to such 
people, the states, the numbers, and the paper they are printed on, everything; and 
all is backed by a sentimental story, the story of his madness, which hardly appeared 
in his art save in the shape of devils and balloons in the skies, and stories and tales on 
the ground of a few prints. His most famous plates, The Siryge, and The Abside of 
Notre Dame, are his worst. The figure of The Siryge is not bad, though whether it was 
anything like the original chimera cannot be known, as the one now on Notre Dame is 
a copy; but Meryon was totally unable to give any idea of the height where the beast is 
perched, or of the mystery and confusion of old Paris below—his drawing of the Tower of 
St. Jacques is rotten—yet if printed, I believe, on green paper—or it may be some other 
colour—by a professional printer, not by Meryon, it is of enormous value. The Abdside is 
a stupid rendering of a magnificent subject, meanly seen, poorly drawn, badly printed. 
The bulk of Meryon’s work is totally uninteresting, totally uninspired, devoid of 
spontaneity, absolutely easy to imitate, poor in perspective, without observation, out 
of scale, faked. The world to-day is full of little Meryons, drawing his subjects in his 
manner; some do it as well as he did. Only the names signed to the plates, and 
the prices obtained are different. The few sous Meryon got for his proofs have in the 
hands of his imitators of to-day grown to dollars and pounds; but the works are the 
same tiresome, stodgy, uninspired commonplaces, and that is the reason why they are 
so sought for. Meryon was not an etcher. He never did—at any rate there is no 
evidence of it in his work—a plate from nature, but he made pencil sketches, or worked 
from photographs, set up his subjects in the fashion of an architectural draughtsman. 
Hamerton, who in Etching and Etchers writes as though he knew Meryon personally, 
says he did work out of doors on the copper, “holding both plate and mirror in one 
hand, laying the lines with the other, and so steadily that the most skilful etchers 
marvel at his skill.”” I should think so, and I marvel more at the story, for Hamerton 
omits the real point that Meryon must have turned his back on his subject to work 
from the mirror. What a detail this adds! And think of the crowd that would gather 
to see the wonderful artist who could draw without looking at what he drew. As for 
his two best plates, in the Collége Henri Quatre, the background never existed at all, 
while the San Francisco was done from photographs. So much for Hamerton’s story. 
These two prints are never referred to by—or are unknown to—the authorities. But 
there is another detail. The man who bothers so much about reversing his prints, 
as Hamerton praises Meryon for doing, is not an etcher at all. Who knows or cares 

* Note: Meryon said himself, “ I am not an etcher, Bracquemond is.” 


eh. 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


whether Rembrandt’s little towns are reversed? Whistler’s work always was re- 
versed. Etchings are made by real etchers on the spot, and are always reversed, for 
when the drawing is made the right way on the plate it is reversed by printing. I know 
some of my aquatints and mezzotints in this book are in the right orientation, but in 
that sort of work one does reverse when drawing in the studio, never when drawing 
from nature. The collectors who are worried by such details should collect post-cards, 
or put their prints before a looking-glass, and they would see them the right way round 
with a fool behind them holding them up by the corners. 

Meryon was an architectural draughtsman and a commercial etcher; everything 
is in his prints, and all are perfect ; but his work has no life in it, it has no go in it; it 
has most of it little art in it. All really great etchings that have ever been made have 
been done straight away on the copper and not faked and tinkered from sketches. 

Any architectural draughtsman with a few months’ training can turn out a fair 
Meryon, if he is stodgy and careful enough, and if he has any real ability he can sur- 
pass most of the master’s work. Meryon himself admitted he was no etcher, but that 
Bracquemond was. Meryon had great love for the Paris of his day and loved its 
disappearing picturesqueness—that he etched it was an accident—really because he 
could not paint, which he tried to do. Why, I have known ranchmen, architects, and 
painters to do excellent Meryons. It is true that Whistler tried to do a Meryon— 
LD’Isle de la Cité—from the windows of the Louvre, and failed, simply because he was 
not a copyist, an imitator, and had something to say for himself, as even Meryon had, 
who would have made a mess of the Black Lion Wharf, which is a work of art—not 
an exhibition of tiresome, misplaced patience. Work and disappointment drove 
Meryon mad. 

But there are a few plates which save Meryon’s reputation. These are: The 
Morgue, which is fine, though it is rare and sought for; and the best of all his plates, 
which can or could be bought for about the same price Meryon got for them, the Coll ége 
Henri Quatre and San Francisco; the first is the most magnificent piece of drawing and 
biting of an imaginary view of a city from a height that has ever been done; and the 
second a most remarkable fake. For Meryon did not, I believe, see San Francisco 
while in the navy, or anyway, did not make the plate there, but did it from photographs 
supplied him by two Frenchmen of the town, who wanted the plate as an advertise- 
ment. Even the photographs are regarded as something holy—and shown as treasures— 
the possessors oblivious to the fact that Meryon would grind out any pot boilers that 
came his way. Le Ministére de la Marine is excellent and contains endless devils— 
even airships—and stories, if they are any help to it—but the palace is finely drawn. 

Meryon’s biting is so perfect, so utterly devoid of accident, that I have often won- 
dered if he bit his plates himself, if he did not turn them over to a professional visiting 
card etcher and engraver—one of those people who make copies on the Quais of Paris 
of Meryon’s plates to-day, or did before the war, and, well, sometimes these are sold as 
originals. ‘There is not a bit of excitement about Meryon, and this is so comforting to 
the present-day unemotional etcher, dealer, teacher, collector; Meryon is so reliable, so 


34 








C. MERYON: COLLEGE HENRI QUATRE BITTEN LINE 


I have pointed out in the text, Hamerton’s inexcusable blunders over Meryon. But the photogravure 
proves the wonder of Meryon’s rendering not only of a city which never existed, but a city Meryon 
made to suit himself — for in state after state he changed it till it pleased him. But because the plate 
exists or did exist, till lately, this wonderful plate, this wonderful creation, is not appreciated as it 
should be simply because it is not rare. Some day it will be, for it will be rare and then collectors 
will try to collect it, and though they can have fine proofs now they do not want them because 
they can have them. That has nothing to do with Etching, however. 

Hamerton pretends this plate was done from nature but this is evidently not so. Meryon describes 
how it was done from sketches himself and some bits of it finished out of doors. There are no such 
wonderful concentric lines, converging to make the composition just as Meryon wanted, in this part 
of Paris. The mad figures, some of them the height of the tallest buildings, give the realism away. 
Meryon describes their size, meaning and purpose in long letters to Burty the French critic. Every- 
where too are the same roofs and windows, the same tricks of The Morgue, but the wonder of this 
plate is the way the town recedes in the distance, street beyond street, house beyond house, and all 
in perfect relation, perfect perspective, and all have character. This impression of a city is wonderful 
and is given perfectly ; impressionism does not mean necessarily a sketch or a note, but giving the 
impression the artist had to an appreciative observer and in this point he has given the feeling, the 
grandeur, the size of Paris in a wonderful fashion. Only those who have attempted such a subject 
know how difficult it is — how long it takes, how hard it is to keep up one’s enthusiasm, yet Meryon 
never tires, never blunders, never makes or leaves the trace of a mistake. It is so wonderful, that 
it is a wonder it has passed unnoticed. In some states there is a sea in the distance so much for Meryon’s 
realism but his imagination which means mastery of drawing is amazing. 


36 











VUE AYO! TGIShAU 


COLLEGE HENRI IV ov | 

GRAND ET PE'TIT COLLEGES. Aw jn 
PRISK DU 'SO 
PARIS DCCCLXIV 











* wore wa) wo ae 2 
Me - i ini a 


A 





ON: THE MORGUE 


MERYON: THE MORGUE BITTEN LINE 


The finest amongst the few fine plates Meryon ever did — and yet this is more owing to the com- 
position and the lighting than to the line — the drawing is remarkable, almost architectural, almost 
photographic — yet it is not, and that is the reason why the plate is so fine — and it is in little differ- 
ences like these that the difference between good and bad work is chiefly found. Yet even in this 
plate there are two styles: the light formal hard work — but in this case right work — on the 
houses, the meaningless scrawled sky and the more meaningless smoke, and weak washing place 
at the bottom. And the figures bringing in their dead, are quite different in handling, from those 
looking over the embankment. The only explanation I can offer is that Meryon never meant to put 
them in at the beginning, but added them, to give effect to the finely drawn architecture. There 
are two manners of work in the roofs also, those further away more loosely drawn and harmonizing 
with the sky, in a way, that in the foreground, the morgue, itself done more formally. This 
difference in handling, which has not been noted by any of the commentators, is probably caused 
by his building up his plates from separate sketches, possibly at separate times, this plate almost 
looks as though two artists worked at it. The popular belief about Meryon’s technique is that it 
is thought to be so correct — the lines are almost mechanical — yet they are artistic — but not free 
and full of life like Whistler’s —and on careful study it becomes evident that they are all a trick. 
Look at the open windows they all give on the same black interior—look at Whistler’s windows 
they are all different—as in nature. Meryon either never drew from nature or never observed. 
Look at the windows even in a sky scraper, they are all different when open— Meryon’s even in 
these small buildings are all the same. As I have said too in speaking of Lalanne’s work, he is more 
observant than Meryon, but Meryon is the fashion and a commercial proposition mostly. And in 
this plate there are no mistakes, erasures, foul biting, none of those qualities found in all spontaneous, 
vital etching — Meryon is perfunctory, perfect, pathetic. He was a strange mixture and this is his 
strangest plate. 


40 


ELIGIBUSH oR 
fee Oe : 





a 





OF CHARLES MERYON 


plain, so direct, so clean, so clear, and the few devils and balloons and stories in some states 
of some plates, give just the snap, the respectable snap, the respectable person wants ; 
Meryon is the respectable person: he probably sketched in a top hat and kid gloves: 
though with a story of himself, the story of his respectable madness, even being drawn and 
etched mad in the mad-house. Then too the printing is perfectly commonplace and 
professional, and all prints, of all states, are all alike; sometimes the paper is changed, 
and the collector holds his breath, and opens his pocket-book; but Meryon never 
changes ; he once did change his mind and took back his prints when he found Haden, 
or was it some dealer, collector, critic, trying to make a corner in them. 

Most of the prints which are signed were printed by Delatre.* Whether Meryon 
had a press is uncertain and the authorities do not enlighten one. One searches the 
authorities! for technical information in vain, if one wants it; Burty says there was 
a wooden press in his studio. 

Meryon is the fetich of the commercial dealer and the prophet of the manufactured 
etcher, and the stock-in-trade of the “experienced” critic. There is no one so easy 
to sell, so easy to imitate, so easy to write about. Following, however, or copying his 
work, is a good thing for a student—afterwards a better thing for the student to get rid of. 

If, as has been said truly, I think by Hamerton, and he did say some true things, 
that in the best etchings not one single line could be left out without loss to the design, 
not a line could be added without being one too many. If half of Meryon’s lines and 
his trick shadows, his ovals cribbed from Rembrandt, were left out, his prints would 
be far better. And as for most of his plates they had better never have been done at 
all—or called etchings anyway. 

I have nothing more to say about Meryon’s work save that it is amazing that a 
man who did two or three such fine plates could have produced such a number of utterly 
commonplace ones. 

I believe the Collége Henri Quatre and certain other of Meryon’s plates are now 
preserved in the Musée Calcographique in the Louvre, with those of other etchers and 
engravers. Prints from these can be bought—there is a catalogue—by artists and 
students at the Gallery; if they are out of print other copies may be ordered; these 
vary in price from a few sous to several francs. As the plates or prints bear a govern- 
ment stamp there is no danger of deception. But for students such prints are of the 
greatest value for study, as they are well, though simply and cleanly, printed, and show 
the work.’ I suppose the plates are steel faced. There is a similar Museum in Rome, 
with a Sales Room, where many of the Piranesis are to be had, as well as works by the 
early Italian line engravers. These too are not badly printed. In the Academy of 
San Fernando in Madrid is the Spanish Calcographic Gallery and printing office. Here 
the works of Goya are ground out, but the printing is vile, and the plates are mostly 
so worn as to be worthless. There are doubtless similar collections in other capitals. 
There should be one in the British Museum and in the Library of Congress. These 


* Nore: And signed by him with his address bitten in the plate. Meryon rarely signed his proofs 
after they were printed. The signing of proofs with pen or pencil begins really with Haden and 
Whistler. 


43 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Museums were formed of copyright plates, and others which have come into possession 
of the nation, after they had been printed, being turned over to the government print 
rooms and stamped by the government. As there is an official stamp on each print, 
there is no excuse for the collector who is deceived by buying them as proofs. They 
are pulled on ordinary paper and sold—one copy only to artists—and being from the 
original plates, they are of far more use than photogravures, or copies of any sort, as 
well as, usually, much cheaper. These Museums and their Sales Rooms deserve to be 
better known to young artists studying etching. 






? dod 











a] 







¢ 
ae 


WHISTLER > 


i’ y 


mee 


NEILL 


oa 





OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER CHAPTER VI 


AM not going into this Historical Section, historically, as I have said, but artistically, 

discussing the most important etcher first. Meryon was not an etcher, but a fad, 

therefore I wished to get rid of him. We are told in historical works that we must 

await the verdict of time before we can sum up anything; by waiting for this 
verdict we lose facts. I prefer facts—and that is why I am stating what I know about 
Whistler and his work before some anemic hump-back newspaper reporter or professor 
of the fine arts gets from people who knew nothing for themselves, and would not 
understand if kicked into them, “the facts” to suit themselves—TI prefer Vasari’s 
contemporary facts, to critics and University Dons and Art Masters fancies, to modern 
commentators versions and mothers meetings and girl graduates and prize-awarding 
infants and perambulating lecturers explanations of them. But positive—actual— 
statements about anything are not wanted to-day. What has posterity done for art? I 
want to record what is being done, and what I know, and that, and not what the future 
may say, if anything is left after fools have got done knocking history to pieces, is of 
importance, and if I can leave a record of what I know of my time, it may be useful, 
even for possible future disputations. 

Therefore, James McNeill Whistler being the greatest etcher who ever lived, I shall 
say what I have to say about his work, and say more about him than any other etcher, 
and say what I know because I worked with him and talked with him for years, because 
it is worth saying and his methods worth following ; for it is in this way alone that tradi- 
tion can be carried on. 

The first thing I want to point out is that Whistler was trained in three good schools : 
in drawing, in topographical drawing, at West Point Military Academy ; in topographical 
etching, accurate etching, in the United States Coast Survey Office, where he applied 
his knowledge of topographical drawing on paper, to drawing on copper plates and 
biting them—a severe and exact school in which he studied and practised his art (as 
Meryon should have done in the French Navy); and then Whistler worked in Paris 
studios and with French artists. And he had the brains to put in practice what he 
learned, though being a great artist he never ceased to regret he did not learn more. 
But till the end of his life he was always striving to learn. 

Whistler could not be confined to making maps, and the marginal sketches on one 
Coast Survey plate and the bits of landscape and birds on another showed the develop- 
ment of his West Point style of drawing, and the etched handling reappears in the 
French series of plates, mostly made in Alsace and Lorraine, and printed in Paris by 
Delatre, entitled Douze Eaux-Fortes @aprés Nature par James Whistler. Imp. Delatre, 
Rue St. Jacques, 171, Paris, Nov. 1858. 

From the first to the last, it should be noted, his etchings were ‘‘d’aprés Nature.” 

The only thing is, that in these he developed his power of drawing and his method 
of biting. But in almost all of the twelve plates there are superfluous lines, meaning- 
less lines, scratchy lines, West Point lines, Coast Survey lines, but never clumsy, stupid, 
stodgy lines. Now of these early plates I only want to call attention to the best. There 


47 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


are only two which really need be considered: First, The Unsafe Tenement (M. 17). 
I am not going into an elaborate description of it. The collector knows the print; the 
etcher should; and the student who does not take the trouble to look up the originals 
in Museums or even the reproductions in the Grolier Club Catalogue is not worth 
bothering about ; most are not, but it is the no-goods, the incompetents, who are laboured 
with. The Unsafe Tenement is the complete expression of the West Point manner, 
carried out and elaborated endlessly. Doubtless, in fact I am sure, he had seen Rem- 
brandt’s mills and cottages and determined even then to surpass the Dutchman—as 
he did in this plate. For Whistler was so big an artist that he admitted his indebtedness 
to others. It is only the little grabber who has seen nothing, who steals everything. 
There is great observation of detail—too much—too great an attempt to render colour 
and surface, too little thought of line. There is endless care, endless trouble to get 
things right, just the right sort of way to start. The second plate, the Street in Saverne 
(M. 19), is notable too, for it is one of the very few nocturnes Whistler etched ; yet here is 
evidence that from the beginning, he loved the beauty of the night. There is scrawling, 
but he got the effect. It might be noted that the price of these twelve proofs was two 
guineas. ‘Twenty sets of artists’ proofs were printed. The Kitchen and The Miser, 
the best of all, were not issued in the French set. Between 1859 and 1861 Whistler 
made many plates including most of the Tames Series, and a number of figure etchings. 
In these he carried on tradition, and still further improved his style. In landscape, 
rather townscape, there is nothing that ever has been done in this world to approach 
the Black Lion Wharf (M. 41). I have been repeatedly criticised for making state- 
ments strongly, but one should only write of what one knows and believes, and then 
it is not possible to write too strongly. Critics don’t know because they can’t do—and 
take their beliefs from someone else. I know that Whistler himself preferred his later 
work, but, if he had not acquired his command of his materials, by this elaborate 
work in the beginning, he never could have expressed himself with such sureness, 
freedom, and simplicity in the end. The statement has been made that these 
plates were done from sketches; most of the so-called sketches were made after 
the plates were finished to show his friends and relations what they were like; they 
were drawn, he told me, straight on the copper, and he has etched the fact on the 
cover of the set. 

In the Black Lion Wharf every single line has a meaning—and there is not one too 
many—and if one were taken away there would be a break in the design. Here and 
there are reminiscences and traces of his earlier handling, yet every single line is more 
expressive than a dozen of his earlier ones. 

He gives in this plate the impression that he has drawn every brick, every tile, 
every plank, in every roof or wall, and some imbeciles have said so; he has done nothing 
of the sort, but he makes you think so; and this is the art of concealing art by art; not 
only this, each brick wall is built of a different sort of brick, built at a different time and 
in a different way, and even the white untouched paper shows plaster of different ages, 
and the single line of bricks, by reinforced biting, gives shadows, modelling and relief. 


48 







‘i y x hs vy dl ie “id 
j ne a) Og De 
=> ais , 
\ 


' STREET IN SAVERNE 


a ie 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: STREET IN SAVERNE BITTEN LINE 


A remarkable example, a memorable proof that from the beginning Whistler saw the beauty of night 
and was able to render it though he saw more beauty and rendered it more subtly as the years went 
on. Yet even in this plate he gives the effect of lamp light — though with many lines and in his 
earliest manner, but rarely in his latest period did he etch nocturnes. Two or three in Venice, and 
one or two in Holland and Belgium. 

Even in this early plate from the French Set there is, with the scrawling sureness and freedom of line, 
the real etched lines, and each of the lines means something. Yet it is not immaculate, perfect 
work like Meryon’s, there is a big mess of foul biting in the foreground and there are passages of 
overbiting and underbiting all over the plate. But Whistler with simple lines, though some are un- 
necessary and scrawled, got the effect of night, which he was after. I do not know how this plate 
was bitten, but I imagine the whole subject was drawn, then the plate put in the bath and then 
when slightly bitten the lighter parts stopped out, bitten again, in the old fashioned way, the darks 
bitten the longest. 


50 


none hes rman” 
“ : 7 oe tn te a8 ORS Re 
in sa oes 
ee amare. ORE pie” i 


: “he of 


mae Ye 


yf 


EE ET 


eae 


ied 2 LITE 


a. 








J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE UNSAFE TENEMENT BITTEN LINE 


One of the best of Whistler’s early plates from the French Set—records of a little town in what was 
then, and now is again, France—Alsace. ‘These plates, his first, were, as all his work, all drawn on 
the spot, and etched better than any one had etched such things before, and, it may be news to 
moderns to know, that in France and England Whistler was ranked with Rembrandt, even from 
the beginning. 

There is no meaningless scribbling on the house. Every line is expressive of plaster, of wood, of 
brick, you can’t tell what Rembrandt’s house by the mill is built of—of course this is rank treason— 
but it is a fact. 

The shadows in The Unsafe Tenement are full of reflected lights and darks, and there is, save in the fore- 
ground, no scribbling and this is the remnant—the reminiscence of the Coast Survey days—a man- 
nerism he outgrew, for he always went on growing, developing in his work. 

His care for, and endeavour, to render the character of surfaces can be most plainly seen in the 
drawing and biting of each panel of the plaster on the walls, no two are alike, each is different, each 
is studied, and note also how the old tiled roof is drawn and modelled, yet it—save in the shadows 
—is all in outline. 

From the very beginning with Whistler everything that was worth doing was worth doing well, and 
he etched even in the early days better than anyone had before him, yet technically he was only 
carrying on tradition. 


54 






a se pe ee 
i oe ey lm 


ge 





J. M. N. WHISTLER: BLACK LION WHARF BITTEN LINE 


Whistler used to say to me, “‘ You like the plate better than I.” I do like it, and he even was not 
ashamed of it—and no one in this world has approached it—how hard I tried years ago. But it is 
the most perfect of the London Series, done on the spot, and just like the place, only there is selection 
and arrangement init all, though that is not evident, yet I know there is, for I know the spot, I shall 
never see again, another of the horrors of war. But Whistler has made this corner of Cherry Gardens 
live forever. He told me he spent three weeks drawing on the plate. He spent most of a year down 
the river to learn it, but by this, the greatest rendering of the poor mean houses and the warehouses 
of London, this American gained immortality with Rembrandt and Hals and Velasquez — and the 
critics don’t understand him yet in this country. 

I have in the text pointed out how every line means plaster, bricks, wood, and tiles in every house 
on the other side of the river and how every line shows what the buildings are made of and how 
they were built. 

And all over the plate the same simple vital expressive line is used, every line means something, and 
is drawn with a purpose. But how few see this or know it—especially the modern art student who 
is too blind to see, too lazy to learn. Whistler and Hokusai and all great artists, spent their whole 
lives, however, trying to learn to draw and regretting that they could not draw better. 

But in this plate done by a young man of twenty-four there is wonderful drawing, biting, printing. 


58 


CAs ov 








OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER 


One authority solemnly has announced that Whistler exhausted all his blacks—put all 
the depth possible on the distant buildings and had no colour left for the foreground. 
That this was the artist’s intention never occurred to the fool. Of its kind, this is the 
greatest etching in the world. Rembrandt never approached it. If Rembrandt’s Mill 
(B. 223) is placed beside it, this will be proven. Whistler was always looking at Rem- 
brandt, as he looked at and admired the Japanese, and admitted it ; it is only, as I have 
said, the little thief who denies he stole everything he has done. Whistler told me he 
took about three weeks over the Black Lion Wharf. 

During the succeeding years came the bitten and dry point portraits. Here too 
he was consciously competing with the Dutchman and although not too much reliance 
or confidence should be placed in the sayings of most of Whistler’s cataloguers, it is a 
fact that he praised and wrote the praise on the print—and for the life of me I cannot 
see why—of the portrait of Clement de Jonghe (B. 272)—for many another is finer. 
Rembrandt’s portrait of his Mother (B. 343) in her widow’s weeds is the finest of all. 
In nothing else does Rembrandt approach Whistler’s portraits—nothing that has ever 
been done, is so beautiful as Weary (M. 92). In this, in the Bibi Valentin (M. 50), Bibi 
Lalouette (M. 51), the Annie Haden in the Big Hat (M. 62), there is a freedom in the 
few lines that Rembrandt never attained ; while if one compares the niggled, laboured, 
elaborated Burgomeister Six (B. 285) with Finette (M. 58), a similar design, those who can 
see, will see immediately, which artist was the greater etcher, but most will not see, or 
do not want to see, if they could, and the Sz« brings more money. 

Again too in the Annie Haden in the Big Hat, which Whistler, this time rightly, 
thought one of his best plates, there is a largeness of design and drawing which gives 
the bit of copper, a foot high by little more than six inches wide, all the dignity of a full- 
length canvas. And one proof of the perfection of Whistler’s work, is the wonderful 
way in which it stands enlargement. Rembrandt stands it too, and so do all other real 
etchers. There were for some years after these portraits, comparatively few plates by 
him, but amongst them is a most interesting one—The Adam and Eve Old Chelsea (M. 
172). In this, one may see a further development; here and there are the lines of the 
Black Lion Wharf, sharp, firm, defined, just as in that were a few of the West Point 
scribblings ; but now there is a further freedom—a painter-like quality that no one had 
even tried for previously—no one has succeeded in getting since. Then too by this 
time he had learned to print. The first proofs were the work of Delatre, by whose side 
Whistler stood, and on whose press he worked, before he had one of his own, and from 
whom he learned the art. It is said by those who either know nothing about the matter 
or conceal what they do know, that in his earliest and latest proofs there is no artificial 
printing, nothing but a clean wipe all over. There is the most complicated wiping, as a 
clean wiped proof by Goulding, and a proof of the same subject by Whistler, will show, 
if they are placed side by side. 


1 The latest attempt to deprive Whistler of his work is to say he derived much from Jacque. 
If this was so, and he copied Jacque’s scrawling, it would account for the meaningless lines in his early 
plates—for all Jacque’s line is meaningless. 


61 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


He perfected his printing in the First and Second Venice Series; a few of these 
prints depend altogether on the printing—notably Nocturne Shipping (M. 220), and 
Nocturne Palaces (M. 199). The Nocturne Palaces is a very poor drawing, made into a 
fair etching by printing; the Nocturne Shipping is made up of but a few, a very few 
lines, well arranged, woven into a thing of beauty, by printer’s ink, used like paint; 
it was rarely that he did depend on ink so much as in these plates, which are really 
monotypes; but he printed, that is painted, on the plates himself; each proof was a 
new problem, sometimes magnificent, sometimes a mess. ‘There is nothing mechanical 
about any of the proofs, he did all the printing, each is different. One authority says 
“a night effect is given by extensive inking of the plate.” The inking when right, 
was what he wanted when he got it. There is no parallel between such plates and the 
underdrawn, overbitten, badly inked, huge machines—the combined misdirected 
struggles of painters who can’t etch, and printers who can’t paint—performances, all 
as alike as two peas, all devoid of merit—save to the artless and the commercial collector. 
As someone has said of these affairs, if the paper was only good, one might cut off the 
edges to print on, but even it isnot. The other plates in the two Venice Series are most 
of them triumphs of printing, notably The Traghetto (M. 188), and The Beggars (M. 191). 
The great deep rich shadows in each, would be a mass of scratches in any other printer’s 
hands. The effect is altogether due to the printing by the artist, and there are half 
the lines in them that Rembrandt would have used. But the lines themselves are 
wonderful, not meaningless like Rembrandt’s endless hatchings, and it is only that 
Whistler has strengthened and supported them by painting on them with ink—it is not 
the accidental smearing about of retroussage, but painting on the plate with an inky 
rag, and the palm of his hand, that has produced the effect—the effect he wanted and 
that is right—the man who does not obtain the effect he wants can’t print—that is why 
he does not—and if his faked-up plate is pulled quite clean, it becomes evident that he 
can’t draw or bite either. And the artist printer, too, must be able to follow his proofs, 
and improve on them, know how he made them, and repeat them. For as Whistler said, 
“if you don’t know how you did a thing, and can’t do it again if you want, what was the 
use of doing it at all.” 

Even more elaborate was the printing in some of the Dutch Series where the drawing 
and biting were more complicated. The Embroidered Curtain, The Lace Curtain (M. 
411),for example. In this the lines are so close together that with the biting they almost 
collapsed apparently, bit almost all into a hole, but he stopped biting them at the right 
moment, and they gave the effect he wanted of old bricks and old woodwork. Only 
those of us who have tried to print such a plate know what care and labour are neces- 
sary to get any result save mud, or crudeness; but the average etcher knows nothing 
about that, he leaves the difficulty to the printer. 

Later on Whistler depended less on printing, but the reason, unknown to those who 
have, with the least experience or knowledge, discussed this, and pointed out, that he 
eventually gave up the elaborate printing, that is, painting on the plate, is not the reason 
they allege—the real reason was he wanted to be more simple and trust more to the line 


62 





J. M. N. WHISTLER: WEARY DRY POINT 


Nothing so beautiful, so weary, so true has been done in ancient or modern art as this dry point, a 
study of Jo Heffernan, Whistler’s model, for the White Girls, and Courbet’s also, and probably 
other artists’. But this plate was most likely done when Jo, tired out, threw herself back and refused 
to pose any longer, and yet Whistler, never tired, always with so much more to do than he knew he 
ever could do, seized the chance and made another masterpiece. Every line is vital and meaning 
and all show what they mean, the hair is golden and the bodice black—and the 1860 skirt conceals 
and reveals the figure in the great easy chair where Jo has sought rest. It is in things like this that 
Whistler proves himself among the greatest of the great. 

All is dry point commenced feverishly, on a handy plate, yet it may have taken days to finish, 
but “finished from the beginning’’—that is, the momentary pose he saw accidentally taken, he has 
made to live forever; this is great art. 

He probably with a very sharp point sketched in the whole subject, going over it most delicately, 
just caressing the copper in the lighter passages holding his point almost vertically; in the darker 
notes bearing on more heavily and inclining the point at a more or less acute angle so that as he 
scratched or rather dug a furrow in the copper with the point, a ridge of metal was thrown up at the 
side and the more the point was inclined, and the more it was dug into the plate, the bigger ridge 
of metal, the burr was thrown up, and it is this burr which holds the ink rather than the lines from 
which it is dug. The heaviest work is in the background. Often Whistler used old plates; look 
at the head at the bottom of this print which shows the way he started work and then for some 
reason discarded a plate. 


64 


Win sive ve 





— 


en 





WHISTLER: ANNIE HADEN IN THE BIG HAT 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: ANNIE HADEN IN THE BIG HAT. BITTEN 
LINE AND DRY POINT 


Whistler always liked this plate and he was right. Every line tells and goes to make up a subject as 
fine in arrangement as anything in paint by Velasquez or Hals, an everlasting proof that one form of 
art in its finest flower, is as great as any other. 

This plate is a specially good example of Whistler’s care in placing a figure so that it shall tell to 
the best advantage. The whole subject stands, as he said it should, within the plate; this is the 
European convention known and understood by the great masters; in Japanese work the design is 
carried outside the frame; and the plate is also a refutation of the statement that the 1860 costume 
was inartistic. Compare the big flowing lines, the simple folds of the cloak, the clustering curls, 
the solemn face of his niece, whom he has immortalized, with the grinning, ogling, vulgar, strutting, 
muscley frumps, who smirk at you from the picture pages of the papers, to-day. The modern girl 
—a caricature—yes, compare her with this tranquil, beautiful creature—a girl—not a guy. 

Note too the variety of handling, of line, of touch he has used in the different parts of the plate, 
yet they are all in harmony, all expressive. 








Ay 


“es 








J. M. N. WHISTLER: BIBI VALENTIN BITTEN LINE 


There are a number of etchings of children by Whistler who used to say he “loved the babbies” and 
this plate with that of the other small child, Bzbz Lalouette, are among the first he did in Paris, and are 
as good as any he ever did after. It has been frequently said that he could not draw hands, yet this 
print shows he could, and give the weight of the small body supported by the hand; it is all delight- 
fully done even to the tiny tired bored little face. There are also to be studied the various portraits of 
Annie Haden, and of the Leyland Children, as well as the exquisite little figures which appear in many 
of his many plates and give life and movement to them. 

Probably drawn and bitten in his early manner, that is, all drawn on the plate at once and bitten 
from light to dark in the bath. These early plates were mostly not printed by Whistler, but by 
Delatre, from whom he learned printing. ‘These two French “ Bibis ” were children of his landlord 
and restaurant keeper in the Latin Quarter in Paris. 


ae 








ee ee ee ae 


Pe er 


— 





OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER 


in his drawing as he did at the beginning, and so when he succeeded he did not need elabo- 
rate printing ; but the failures he made are not recorded. 

The reason is that he gave up making elaborate plates and used the fewest lines, 
and therefore simpler printing to show them. Anyone who knows Whistler’s later work 
knows this. Look at the Belgian Set, Brussels Series, where all the elaborate buildings of 
the Grande Place are rendered with the fewest lines. The Naval Review (twelve, more or 
less, plates, done in a day: he had to do them in a day or not at all). The Touraine 
Series: again simplicity, directness, economy of work—he was travelling and sketching. 

And the final Paris Series done standing in the streets. These were treated simply 
in line—therefore they were printed simply. As in his painting for several years before 
his death, he attempted, or rather finished, few large canvases, so in etching he at- 
tempted few elaborate plates ; and the same is true of his lithographs,—save one of the 
last, The Thames, Lithotint, worked out of the window at the Savoy—where he had time 
but trouble; he adapted his method to his surroundings. 

Now, these later etchings being drawn with few lines, he wanted those lines to tell; 
therefore they were, in a way, printed cleanly ; but to say, as has been said, that he had 
renounced elaborate tone, and therefore all others should do so, is nonsense, the non- 
sense of the professor. The person who first made this pronouncement about the Paris 
Series only worked one morning with Whistler over these prints. And Whistler went to 
him as a good printer to see what was in the plates, for he thought them underbitten, 
yet he was afraid in this matter to trust his own press,—fearful that it was not powerful 
enough, and fearful also of having to reground, and so possibly ruin them. Truly a 
little experience is a dangerous thing. Another matter worth noting is that though 
every little Meryon, or penny Whistler, can either have all his works in series subscribed, 
or the single prints purchased before they are issued, or cornered—or underwritten, 
Whistler never found any dealer willing to issue any series after the Venice plates, and 
these did not sell for years, and as for the single plates, till almost his death there were 
plenty of unsold proofs in the studio; and of some of the later plates scarce any were 
printed by him, and the price for these Venetian masterpieces was about $7.50 each. 

Another subject is Whistler’s method of work. I know nothing about his earlier 
methods, but I do know his later ones because I worked with him. He usually, if pos- 
sible, got someone to ground his plates—I grounded the last, and the ground came off, 
when he bit them. Whether this was owing to his taking them away before the ground 
was properly set, and packing them in his trunk, the change of temperature between 
London and Corsica, the acid he used, or that the ground was bad, I do not know—all 
artists have had such accidents. So far as I know, he only bit one or two plates; his 
Executrix must still have a number unbitten, or unprinted—at any rate unexhibited. 
Anyway I grounded them, and I believe he drew on them, and when I saw him at work, 
he usually drew on a number of plates before biting any, the artist always dreads the 
biting, and if he had known what we now know nothing would have gone wrong. 

His method of drawing on the plate—‘‘the secret of drawing” as he called it—was 
to fix on the copper, when grounded, the spot, or the subject, of greatest interest. This 


75 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


he drew first, making a little picture complete on the plate, but so placed that he could 
add to it the rest of the composition. Now as nothing can be added to the size of a 
plate or lithographic stone, as to paper or canvas, the artist is bound to think out his 
composition most carefully within certain fixed bounds, and to think how it shall be best 
placed on the printing surface. This is one of the most difficult things in Engraving. 
After Whistler got the ‘“‘heart of his subject,” as he called it, on the copper, he sometimes 
slightly bit it, sometimes drew the secondary portions around it, only enlarging the 
composition, which, as he said, “was finished from the beginning,” and so he continued 
till the work was complete. 

The drawing was done with a tiny double-ended steel point, made for him by an 
instrument maker in Paris. 

The biting was, as I have seen it, most primitive. A small bottle of acid, nitric and 
water, was mixed. The plate was placed in a wash basin. I remember one Sunday 
summer afternoon in the Rue du Bac, he bit the copper plates in his garden, to escape 
the fumes of acid; and a few drops of acid and water were taken out of the bottle on a 
feather. With this feather dipped in the diluted acid the darkest parts of the design 
were painted, for he maintained that a drop, when it commenced to bite, was as strong 
as a puddle, and also he said that as the acid put on in this way had a tendency on the 
plate to gather in spots, by means of his feather he could coax and paint it about, both 
removing the bubbles, which form over the lines, and making the biting varied. 

By means of the feather too he dragged the acid around and removed it from, or 
painted it for a moment, on delicate passages, and so got over, to a great extent, stopping 
out—at that time a most difficult operation. He took ordinary stopping-out varnish 
and thinned it with turpentine, and painted over the parts he thought enough bitten, 
with a camel’s hair brush dipped in the mixture; but although it worked fairly well and 
dried pretty quickly, the turpentine destroyed the ground under it, the varnish was 
supposed to protect, and this was a cause of great trouble, the ground coming off some- 
times in those places it was intended to preserve. He also between the bitings drew with 
his tiny needle on the plate. These needles he carried in his pocket in a little silver case. 
The ground was bad on all these plates, and broke up. His methods of printing I don’t 
think were much changed from those taught him by Delatre; the plate either hot or 
cold as it required, was wiped either with the hand, or rag, so as to get the best result. 
He was not tied to any method—all he wanted was the best proof he could pull, and he 
was the best printer who ever lived, of his own work, and he never, so far as I know, 
printed anyone else’s. 

He had no secrets. ‘The secret,” as he used to say, ‘‘was in doing it.” 

Whistler put the ink on with a dabber, often working it into the lines with his 
fingers. Instead, however, of roughly wiping the ink off all over, as the printer does, 
without regard to the design, he coaxed it off the plate, playing with it, getting a lighter 
tone on some parts than others, either with a rag or his hand, which he cleaned on the 
shoulder of his blouse. This spot grew into an epaulette of ink. He was longer over 
the wiping than any professional, and when either all over, or in parts, the plate took on 


76 





J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE BRIDGE BITTEN LINE 


Of this plate it should be said, as Whistler said of Rembrandt’s Clement de Jonghe, “without 
flaw, beautiful as a Greek marble or a canvas by Tintoret, a masterpiece in all its elements beyond 
which there is nothing.” This is a true definition of Etching, because it maintains the fact that 
Etching ranks with Sculpture, Painting and Drawing—is one of the arts and the equal of them. 
And when he says “without flaw a masterpiece in all its elements” he describes The Bridge. 

For perfect expression, by the simplest, fewest, yet most expressive lines, this is one of the greatest 
works of art in the world, only equalled by other plates by Whistler. I know these are strong words, 
and I know most to-day, are afraid to have the courage of their opinions — usually the opinions of 
others — but Whistler is the greatest etcher who ever lived. I have always known this, always said 
so, and [ shall continue to say so as long asI live. And why is The Bridge a great masterpiece? Because 
every line in it is exquisitely drawn, exquisitely arranged, exquisitely bitten, exquisitely printed. 
There is the story in the plate, of the life on the little canals. Those who know them, know that 
that life, that movement, that architecture is perfectly expressed. 

To begin with the sandolas are being rowed home. You know this because in the bow of the 
nearest lies a boy asleep, tired out after a night’s fishing. The line of the boat carries into the design 
and this is continued by the line of the reflections of the shadow of the bridge. Then the railing 
of that carries the eye back and up the riva to the group of houses in the distance, “the heart of the 
picture,’ as Whistler called it. Every line is placed with the utmost thought and care and observa- 
tion. Note how the reflections are not only studied under the bridge, but also how Whistler has 
studied the breaking up of them, by the wake of the boat, which has just passed through the shadow 
and these ripples also carry the eye into the design. How carefully the clothes are arranged on the 
railing, hung out to dry, and how full of character is every one of the figures loafing or going about 
their business! And the drawing of the poor, mean houses is marvellous, and the line on which the 
composition is based leads past the houses, to the trees in the extreme distance. ‘This use of line to 
carry the eye into a composition, is not the property of Whistler — Ruskin points it out in connection 
with Turner, devoting much space to the subject and illustrating it with diagrams. And to explain 
what I mean I have drawn one which I hope explains itself and shows the way in which the lines 
carry the eye into the composition. 





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J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE DOORWAY BITTEN LINE 


The Doorway is amongst the greatest of Whistler’s triumphs, the exquisite suggestion of the time and 
water-worn stone, the rusting wrought-iron work, the dim interior of the palace turned shop and work 
room, and the amazing printing make this in their perfect combination a great technical masterpiece 
of etching. 

It was the correct thing with critics to say that Whistler could not draw architecture, was afraid to 
try. But as he himself would say “‘ why repeat a masterpiece”. That he rendered great buildings 
he proved in The Palaces and The Salute and that he understood detail is shown in this plate which, 
like the others, was published in the Venice Sets. - 

The difference of stone and iron is lovingly studied and perfectly expressed and note how all the 
crumbling flower-like decorations have rather become like butterflies and how The Butterfly harmo- 
nizes with them. 

In the original, the interior is but a mystery in the shadows drawn with the utmost elaboration— 
while to get the effect of the reflections—he gives up drawing with the point to concentrate the eye 
on the architecture and draws the water with printers’ ink, the most perfect printing that was ever 
done, all the water is painted on the plate with a rag and ink. This plate was bitten, not in a bath, 
but, so I have been told, by drops of acid poured on it and then painted about with a feather, the 
acid left longer where the darks were wanted, brushed away for the lights; this method gives the 
endless variety of the surface of the plate from the greatest delicacy of the shadowed interior to 
the overbiting under the windows. The grace of the figure is adorable. 


82 





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WHISTLER : THE RIVA 
DUVENECK: THE RIVA 


J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE RIVA. F. DUVENECK: THE RIVA. 
BOTH BITTEN LINE 


Whistler’s Riva is one of the most Venetian of the Venetian Series—a study of the Riva Schiavoni from 
his window in Venice. Every figure is full of life and character, and so is every building and every boat. 
Duveneck’s Riva is one of the plates which were attributed to Whistler, and although the subject 
is the same the difference in the two men’s handling is perfectly evident. But it is most interesting 
to compare the different way in which the two artists worked, and worked about the same time. 

Duveneck etched this subject from the balcony of the Casa Kirsch where he lived and Whistler 
etched the Riva from the Casa Jankovitz where he lodged, high up, looking out also on the Lagoon, 
and it is quite probable that Duveneck showed the plate to Whistler and he saw how fine the sub- 
ject was and did it from his own rooms in his own way; it is equally probable that the reverse is 
the case, no one will ever know, no one ever did know, save Otto Bacher, and he forgot to tell. 
There is, however, no resemblance in style, handling, biting or printing in the two American Etchers’ 
works, as these reproductions prove. Haden and Legros knew this perfectly well, but anything 
was good enough then to try to kill Whistler, and this endeavor to belittle him goes on still. The 
two prints are remarkable proof that when artists etch the same subject they must put their char- 
acter, their individuality into their work, and etching is the method by which this can be done. 


86 













——- — 


OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER 


a golden glow, and when finally he could see his face in it as in a mirror, he folded up in 
his hand a soft ink-charged rag, and, not like the printer with his clean silk, wiping the 
ink out of the lines, wiped more ink into them and on to the surface, painted the plate 
with the ink-soaked rag. That was the only special thing I ever saw him do, but it is 
the basis of his printing, and no professional printer knows of it, or could do it if he 
did. Even Goulding admitted Whistler’s mastery, and said that Whistler was a better 
printer than he, which was really a tribute from Goulding. 

As to trials and states of Whistler’s plates, some of the cataloguers have found as 
many as ten or a dozen states of some of them. Now the facts are these. As Whistler 
pulled a proof and lifted it off the press, he looked lovingly over it, as carefully as every 
printer etcher does, and if he saw in any part a line too strong, he scraped or burnished 
it; if too weak, he added to it with dry point; and this went on, whenever I was with 
him, with almost every proof. Rightly speaking, in most of Whistler’s plates, there are 
no real states at all—that is in the sense that Rembrandt made states. Rembrandt 
took out whole sections of a design and replaced them by another composition ; this is a 
genuine state, done for, mostly, the genuine collector’s delight. It is rare indeed that 
Whistler did anything of the sort, or made changes so sweeping, for example, as those in 
The Beggars. This and The Traghetto as published, are new plates. What he did was 
to try to improve the design and the print; and I have heard him say, after pulling a 
first proof: ‘‘I don’t like that, but someone will because it is the first,’ and he wrote 
“first proof” on it. The plate was then taken up and lines with dry point added or 
with scraper taken away. If these are states, I believe of some of the first series of 
Venice plates, instead of a dozen as the cataloguers find, there are seventy-five, in the 
hundred pulled. Again, some of these people solemnly criticize dry point, which is not 
strong enough, or which has had the burr scraped off, as a late state because of the 
appearance—not aware that if Whistler did not like the burr he removed it, as all artists 
do before printing—not aware that dry point may be added to. The compiler of a 
catalogue is a dangerous person to lean upon for artistic facts. 

Whistler always used old paper, and in his hunt for it he hesitated at nothing—no 
price was too high for it, no search too long. I made a find with him once at Fontaine- 
bleau of two folio volumes, with pressed flowers in them; the paper was of no use to the 
dealer, the flowers of no use to us. But we eventually got the books, but the dealer 
got her price. As he knew the value of the paper, he did not waste it, cutting it near 
to the size of the plate; then he trimmed the edges, leaving in later years the little 
protecting tab, with the butterfly and imp, on it alone. 

There is no question that cut down proofs look better than those with margins; 
the untouched, unprinted paper is distracting, and often cockles, and mounts are rarely 
satisfactory; but there is also no doubt that trimmed prints are easily ruined; there is 
nothing to hold them by save the print itself when unmounted, and damage or tears 
occur to the cut-down print, when a margin would save it. 

He trimmed the prints after they were dry; he took them from the press, placed 
each between a folded sheet of blotting paper, and threw them on the floor, changing the 


88 





J. M. N. WHISTLER: THE BEGGARS: EARLY STATE BITTEN LINE 


It was in plates like this, The Traghetto, and Nocturne Shipping that Whistler carried his system of 
printing further than any one else. Not only is there in the dark archway the same elaborate, but 
much freer work than Rembrandt put in the Burgomeister Six. But Whistler added richness by 
covering the lines, painting on them a tone of ink and so obtained a quality and depth that no one had 
achieved before, scarce attempted. In the Nocturne Shipping the whole effect is got by painting ink 
on the plate. The lines are few and not very well done, but the painting has brought the design to- 
gether. In The Beggars there were many lines and close and they would have been hard and dry if 
Whistler had not bathed them with color and brought them all together by his wonderful printing in 
the manner and by the method which I have explained. 

It is most interesting to compare Rembrandt’s Beggars at the Door of a House, or any of his other 
beggars with this plate. Both artists were perfectly independent of each other in treatment of their 
subject and in handling. But both have made great etchings of the same subject. 

There are said to have been two plates, each made of The Beggars and The Traghetto, and Otto H. 
Bacher, in With Whistler in Venice describes how they were done. At any rate there are enormous 
differences and I am willing to take Bacher’s statement, as this would have been easier than to make 
the changes. To show these changes I have included early and late states of the plate. 


THE BEGGARS: LATE STATE 


This is the final state of The Beggars and shows how Whistler developed the Venetian plates from 
ghosts to realities—as is proven by comparing the two states but this was not done as Bracquemond 
did it deliberately, but experimentally by Whistler, he carried on in every way he could, always experi- 
menting—as Bacher says, making in this case a new plate—at any rate changing it completely—but al- 
ways trying to get what he wanted though he did not always know how to get it. 

Bracquemond knew how to do it—and did it—apparently with ease—Whistler with difficulty—but 
Whistler worked things out and eventually succeeded in making a great work of art as this is. 

Bacher, in his book With Whistler in Venice, says, or I understand him to say, that Whistler inked the 
plate and The Traghetto with white ink or paint and either pulled a proof of it and transferred that 
while wet to the new grounded plate, or ran the inked first plate laid face downward on the second plate 
through the press, and then went over the lines with a point, making what changes he wished. I regret 
Whistler never said anything to me about the method he used. If he did make two plates, these prints 
are both from the same copper. 


Nore: For illustrations see two following pages. 


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ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


blotters every day. Once a charwoman threw away a whole set of Venice proofs with- 
out looking in the blotters. When sufficiently dry he trimmed them with a pair of scis- 
sors, following round the plate mark just outside it. Mr. Menpes says that he cut the 
edges, after placing a sheet of glass over the print, with a razor. I never saw him do so. 

There was still another reason for trimming. In some matters of printing he was 
like all of us—who are not professional printers—not quite sure of himself, and at times, 
as this old paper is often brittle or soft, the edge of the plate when going through the 
press, cut the paper in places right through; the edges then have to be trimmed, or 
the paper patched up—a vile practice which leaves marks. And also he at times would 
get creases in the print caused by the blankets, or the paper not being perfectly wet, 
or flat or slipping, and after the print is pressed these show as white lines and nothing can 
be done with them save by painting or drawing over them—and this shows, so he let 
them alone. Had he, however, been a perfect mechanical printer, a perfect master of 
the professional side of printing, he would most likely have been a poor etcher. He often 
on his proofs wrote his own opinion of them in a word or more, and on specially good ones 
at times, on the backs, put, in a circle, little letters or numbers signifying that he was 
pleased with them. 

I have gone at some length into this discussion of Whistler’s work because I know 
how he worked, and a personal statement of this sort is worth any amount of theory, 
and posthumous history, and I have stated facts concerning the man and his work 
which I know. 

I had something to do with making the world, which laughed at and despised 
Whistler, admit its blunders and errors, and acknowledge him to be the greatest 
master of modern time, that is something I am proud of. The world now admits his 
greatness, I always said he was the greatest etcher of all time, his work proves it. 

Finally every etching by Whistler is a direct study from nature of something seen 
—which could only be rendered by etching. And such work alone is etching, and in 
real, vital, genuine etching James M. N. Whistler is the greatest artist who ever lived. 


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WHISTLER: ZAANDAM 





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These two plates show the two great artists’ methods of work, and they might almost ha‘ 
sitting back to back on the same spot—for I have seen the place and worked there my 


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OF REMBRANDT CHAPTER VII 


EMBRANDT was a great artist, but he is now a great bogey. Rembrandt 

made the biggest plates in the past, the only prints that brought a high price, 

and that is one of the reasons why he is considered such a great etcher to- 

day, why he was respected in his own day. Carry out the same com- 
parison now. Who is the greater artist—Whistler, or the dealer who runs the hack, 
who hires the printer, who pulls the biggest and the most expensive copper plates? 
Rembrandt was fully alive to the importance of proofs, states, dealers, and collectors : 
he was in these matters most modern, or the moderns are most imitative. Rembrandt’s 
best plates are his smallest—in fact most of his large compositions are only etchings in 
name; they are magnificent, some of them, but they are not etchings, in the true sense. 
They are mostly machines and pot boilers. 

I will again define an etching as an impression set down on a copper plate from 
nature or life—not a built up, elaborated composition. Rembrandt sometimes repro- 
duced his own compositions. Whistler never did. That, as Whistler said, ‘“‘was as im- 
possible as for the hen to lay the same egg twice.” 

But Rembrandt did make magnificent pot boilers by etching. Whistler did not. 
It is said Whistler could not: he never tried, for he knew such things were not etchings, 
they were machines by which Rembrandt gained his living. Rembrandt knew it too, 
but apparently they paid. Yet Whistler also had money troubles. 

Whistler has stated it all so clearly in the Propositions : 


‘““The huge plate is an offence.” 


I donot mean to say that Rembrandt’s plates, the huge ones, are offences, and I do 
not think Whistler referred to him, but they are not spontaneous vital expressions. 
Whistler was, when he wrote the Propositions, referring to the huge manufactured ma- 
chines, then coming into vogue, with which the world is to-day flooded. 

Now Frank Duveneck working with Whistler and Otto Bacher, while they were all 
in Venicc, 1879-1880, did make some very large plates, but Duveneck’s were all done 
from nature, and I believe mostly made on zinc; they are but little known, but several 
of them are very fine: the only very large plates that I know which really are fine. 
Over these plates, when shown for the first time in London, there was the usual row 
kicked up, this time by Haden and Legros, from which, as may be read in The Gentle 
Art, the “enemies” did not emerge with much distinction. Whistler was accused of 
having made the etchings and signed them with Duveneck’s name; there is not the 
faintest resemblance to Whistler’s work, but despite their size, owing to the fact that 
they were done from nature, they are fine, and two or three of them are of very great 
merit, especially The Rialto looking under the arch, and the Ca d’Oro from across the 
canal; but there is no suggestion of Whistler in them, either in the subjects of most, 
or the handling of any, nor do they technically approach Whistler. 

As to Rembrandt’s large plates, nearly all of them religious subjects, they are 
fine; but in the sense of real etching, they are not etchings. They were published as 


99 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


religious prints and to that class of work they belong, and not to original spontaneous 
etching. 

The finest portrait Rembrandt ever did is that of his Mother (B. 343). This is 
exquisite. It is extraordinary that Whistler never etched his mother, or rather failed 
in the single attempt he made to do so. 

As I have said, I do not place the Clement de Jonghe (B. 272) so high, by any means, 
amongst Rembrandt’s portraits of men, as Whistler did. On a proof owned by Mr. 
Wrenn of Chicago, Whistler wrote: ‘Without flaw! Beautiful as a Greek marble or 
a canvas by Tintoret; a masterpiece in all its elements, beyond which there is nothing.” 

Far finer are the—as I have said—exquisite Mother (B. 343), the Young Man Mus- 
ing (B. 269); but how much better the latter would have been had the badly drawn 
black arm been omitted, and the meaningless shadow behind left out. It is the same as 
with Van Dyck’s wonderful heads just sketched in, all ruined by the mechanical human 
machine that got hold of them afterwards and finished them in every sense. The 
Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill (B. 21) seems to me with its great simplicity of line, 
yet great richness of colour, one of the best of his own numerous portraits. Curious is 
the Bust of Rembrandt when a Young Man (B. 338), for a curious reason, a large part is 
drawn with a multiple, or double needle point, described in the technical chapter (Etch- 
ing Needles); by the use of this needle he has got a brush-like quality in the coat and 
background. 

Though much more elaborate, good too are the Juan Lutma (B. 276) and Arnoldus 
Tholinx (B. 284), but they too would have been better with half the work omitted ; 
doubtless the sitters made him put it in, though I am not sure, for in his own portrait, 
Rembrandt Etching (B. 22), there is the same over-elaboration ; but after all, when one 
has gone over these things it becomes evident that his Mother’s Portrait (B. 343) is the 
best, and that is not so good as Whistler’s Annie. The nudes, mostly clumsy, do not 
interest me, and I do not think an original etcher or engraver ever has rendered satis- 
factorily a nude figure, at any rate not since Mantegna and Diirer. 

Of all Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings I believe the literary authorities pronounce 
the Three Trees (B. 212) to be the finest—it is one of the worst; it is an over-elaborated, 
faked up, unspontaneous bit of story-telling. There are only two things in it worth 
study: the distant fields with their finely arranged lines and spaces; and this I imagine 
is the only part of the plate done from nature, one of the only portions certainly, with 
real feeling in it,—probably there was another subject done on the same plate,— 
while the trees, stories, and storm are an afterthought. And the other bit is the rain. 
There is a curious thing about that. Rembrandt has rendered a rain-storm, with the 
same convention as the Japanese, or what is probable, the Japanese stole the convention 
from him. Yet no authority has noted it. Besides there are the clouds, fine clouds, 
but put in with no relation to the design or atmospheric conditions, for they are flying 
each every which way. As to the endless stories, anecdotes, and occurrences in the 
shadows, I am not sure whether they were added as a concession to contemporary col- 
lectors (as Turner did for the pen makers, Ruskin, and the pill people) or whether this, 


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RIALTO 


F. DUVENECK. THE RIALTO. BITTEN LINE 


Duveneck was one of those rarest of artists who attempted etching once, and succeeded in making 
good plates, and so did he attempt painting, and succeed in making good pictures, but he kept on with 
his painting, though he never surpassed his early, his earliest works. Many are the contemporaries 
of Duveneck who have, as etchers, eclipsed him in popularity ; no one has approached him in beauty 
and meaning of line. Bauer, whose large plates mostly, surely are an offence, has been boomed, 
Duveneck ignored ; both were big artists. Duveneck was far the bigger etcher—and he is scarce known 
even among artists, and when he was given a gallery at the San Francisco Exhibition in 1915, 
and filled it with his paintings, etchings, and sculpture, scarce any of his American colleagues, of the 
younger generation, had seen his work or heard his name, but he was not a best seller, and a best prize 
winner—the standards of American art—but just an artist who had done what he wanted in his own 
way and for his own pleasure. Duveneck’s interest in etching was inspired by Otto Bacher, one of his 
pupils in Munich, Venice, and Florence, for Duveneck, going to Munich to study painting, found shortly 
that he was a master, and hailed by the professors as the modern Rembrandt. He and Chase were 
there together studying. At the end of a few years Chase had, or soon after he returned, attracted 
to his studio, as pupils, all the young lady amateurs and a few artists of the country. Duveneck 
drew to Munich most of the artists who to-day have done the best art work in America. 

In Venice he took up etching in the late seventies, I believe before Whistler went there, at the suggestion 
of Bacher, doubtless. Whistler was a far greater influence after his arrival—and a number of plates 
of the city were done by Duveneck. They were all made out of doors, mostly on zinc, and bitten in 
a primitive fashion—in one, he told me, the acid made a large hole before he learned how to control it 
—all were printed on an old press, with a wooden plank bed—which Diirer may have used, when in the 
city; and I have no doubt it served Canaletto, and Whistler certainly pulled proofs onit. I worked on it 
once. It should better have been preserved than many of the objects in the museums of Venice. When 
Duveneck’s proofs were pulled they were sent to London, tothe first, or an early, exhibition of the Painter 
Etchers, but before being shown they fell into the clutches of Haden, Legros and a Mr. Drake, the Secre- 
tary of the Painter Etchers, all eager to demolish Whistler, and these plates were pronounced to be 
by Whistler, but signed by this false name Duveneck. Whistler was breaking his contract with the Fine 
Art Society, who had sent him to Venice and paid him rooo guineas for twelve plates and he was making 
more plates to make more money. However, the authorities only made themselves ridiculous. But 
Duveneck’s plates, abominably printed, were the success of the season; later I induced Keppel to 
print a number of them decently, and this Rialto is one. It is in the Avery collection in the New 
York Public Library. It is a genuine etching, every line is vital, the point of view is personal, and 
the arrangement individual, and this is the case with all the rest. Only in one or two, so far as I 
remember, is there in composition any similarity to Whistler’s work. Those are of the Riva, and I 
am not sure that Duveneck did not make his plates before Whistler came to Venice; at any rate, 
he showed them before Whistler exhibited his. Duveneck, so far as I know, only worked fora short 
period in Florence and Venice at etching, but this Rzalto and his Desdemona’s House and the Ca’ 
d’Oro are masterpieces. He too discovered the beauty of the flag poles in front of St. Mark’s, with 
their floating, flaming banners swung up on a festa. There are two Rivas by each artist, similar, 
as I have said, in being taken from an upper window, the window of the rooms where both artists 
lived, and which gave on that wonderful, ever changing, ever moving life of the city. A few by Duveneck 
were done on the Zattere, and by the Dogana, and one or two in Florence, they are masterpieces. 
But Duveneck found it easier to teach, than to paint or etch. Chase found it paid better, yet he painted 
more and more and made some plates as well. Duveneck for years did little and showed less—fell 
out of sight in this country—lived his own life, in his own city, in his own way, beloved and respected 
by all who knew him—and then just before his death found himself a great man—to the little men 
in American art, as he always had been to those who knew. I had, as Chairman of the International. 
Jury of Awards for Engraving, at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, the honor of proposing a special 
medal for these etchings being awarded Duveneck—as he was a member of the Jury he was hors concours. 
Immediately the painters and sculptors took up the idea, though they would not have dared to propose 
him, and Duveneck had his reward and came into his own in his own country. There is a collection of 
Duveneck’s Etchings in the Cincinnati Art Museum, but I do not know of any other complete one. 


102 





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REMBRANDT: THE MILL BITTEN LINE 


The only really good landscape and architectural subject Rembrandt ever did — and yet this does 
not for a moment compare with Whistler’s Unsafe Tenement or numbers of the Thames Series — but 
Rembrandt is a fetish and it is treason to criticise him and his work. W.M. Chase used to say he 
was sure the Dutchman was a Jew, and there are certain things about his work which seem to prove 
it. But if the drawing of the tiles on the roof of the house is compared with those on the roof of 
The Unsafe Tenement or Black Lion Wharf, all who can see, will see, who is the more expres- 
sive etcher, and this is true of all the two men’s works. Half the time Rembrandt don’t get the 
strength he wants, and to get it scribbles over the weak spots and shadows with meaningless lines; 
look on the roof of the house, the shaded side of the mill and the shadows under it, and I never saw 
in Holland a mill with sails like this. Still it isfar the best thing in architecture Rembrandt ever did 
and the little bit of the big dyke is good too. And there is another thing about this plate; it is so far as 
I know the first example of Work being used as a subject in art and for its own sake, not as an adjunct 
or background. Rembrandt was the first of artists to see and render the Wonder of Work. 

The biting is very good and direct, probably Rembrandt built a wall of wax around the edges of the 
plate, that seems to have been the original fashion as may be seen in Bosse’s treatise on engraving. 
Then when the wax was hard and water proof, acid was poured all over the plate and the wax acted 
like a dyke, there was a sort of a spout modelled at one corner to pour the acid off, when the plate 
was sufficiently bitten to stop out, and the process of pouring on acid, letting it bite and stopping 
out till the greatest darks were obtained, by the longest biting, was the method of the past — But 
we have changed all that. 

Whether Rembrandt used the Dutch Mordant, a mixture of acids, or nitric I do not know. The Dutch 
Mordant bites very slowly, turns the lines black, does not give off bubbles, but in its way works very 
well. The Dutch Mordant made today is much better in every way. 


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REMBRANDT: THE MOTHER BITTEN LINE 


Rembrandt’s best portrait, for he like Whistler, loved to make his ‘‘ mummie look as nice as possible.” 
Whistler failed and had the sense to destroy the plate he attempted; Rembrandt succeeded and the 
old woman lives forever —a son’s tribute to his mother and his art. Still, fine as it is Whistler’s other 
portraits are better as etchings for he got his effect with fewer lines. Rembrandt has rendered 
admirably the wrinkled old time worn face, and the tired hands, but he has so much cross hatch- 
ing on the dress to show it is black, that he has lost many of the vital lines with which he must 
have commenced the figure, but he has well distinguished between the textures of the lace, the 
cap, the shawl, and the dress. 


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WEIGHER’S FIELD 


REMBRANDT: THE GOLD WEIGHER’S FIELD. BITTEN LINE 
AND DRY POINT 


The greatest of Rembrandt’s landscapes — the only one — for save that of The Mill and bits of some of 
the others, the distance in the Three Trees, there is nothing to approach it, by him. It, in its way, 
is perfect in every part, and every line has meaning. If you are not able to see this — to feel that 
each line delights you, expresses the lay of the land, the undulations of the ground and that there 
is not a wrong line in it —and that a surveyor could work from the print — well you can’t — and 
it doesn’t matter — but the plate is a master work — Rembrandt’s greatest landscape. 

Various authorities and various artists have asserted that this plate is dry point with the burr taken 
off, others that it is bitten. I believe it is the latter with dry point added. 


114 


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SIX BRIDG 





REMBRANDT: SIX BRIDGE BITTEN LINE 


This reproduction confirms everything I have said of this plate. There is no reason to take it seriously 
— Rembrandt did not do so himself — I am sure — so why should we allow respectable antiquity to 
overpower us, or even modern critics’ estimates? The plate is poor. If done by an amateur, and 
an amateur could do it just as well, it would be dismissed with contempt. But it is by Rembrandt, 
or is said to be, and so it must be taken seriously; it is this preposterous praise of rubbish which 
has bred anarchy in art. 

From the story, which is told in the book, it must be evident that Rembrandt did not take it 
seriously. Why should we? It is bad and so are most of his landscape etchings. 


118 


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REMBRANDT: BEGGARS AT 
THE DOOR OF A HOUSE 


REMBRANDT: BEGGARS AT THE DOOR OF A HOUSE. BITTEN 
LINE 


When Rembrandt wanted to, he could do things; and in this plate, he — in his own way, and in his 
own time — rivals Whistler’s Soupe a Trois Sous or The Longshoremen; both artists were doing the 
people of their day and generation, and they have made the people live when peace congresses and 
Leagues of Nations have let them die and rot, or make fools of themselves. 

Another plate of Whistler’s which may be more appropriately compared, though in subject only, 
with this is The Beggars of the Venice Set. Technically, however, the other two mentioned are more 
similar to Rembrandt’s work. 

Even this fine plate may only have been worked on by Rembrandt, there is so much unlike him about 

it — Especially if the rotten Six Bridge is by him — and that is not so bad as lots of his other signed 

landscapes — but a signature is the easiest thing to forge. 


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OF REMBRANDT 


like some of his other plates, is a worked up Siegers plate bought at that artist’s sale, 
or as I have said a faked up thing of his own. As to the absurdity of the whole storm 
effect, Michel describes the rain as coming on, Binyon as passing away, Hamerton 
says nothing, Hind hedges, Haden says the “‘Sky (is) full of angels’ wings’’—a perfect 
proof that Rembrandt’s ‘“‘greatest”’ etching is an utter fiasco in really rendering a dra- 
matic effect. In fact there are not more than six, out of his twenty-six (I believe) land- 
scapes that are worth much artistically. The Gold Weigher’s Field (B. 234) is very fine, 
the finest of all, for here Rembrandt was drawing the lines of the fields, the distance, 
getting perspective, trying to put down what he really saw, what really interested him, 
not telling a story. So too in the foreground of the Amsterdam (B. 210) there is fine 
work, but the distance is poor, mean, hard, and crowded. I have put it and Whistler’s 
Amsterdam on the same page as proof. The big tree in the Omval (B. 209) is wonderfully 
drawn, but the rest of the plate is worthless. Most of the farms, barns, and towers are 
perfunctory, clumsy, full of meaningless lines, put in any way; if one has a rabbit in 
one proof, that ruins the rest of the plate, that is the state to be sought for — the fact 
that Rembrandt knew it was bad and scraped the rabbit out, doesn’t matter, but the 
hunt for the rabbit proof does. So too with the Hog (B. 157), as Hamerton points 
out. This was done on a big plate, intended for something else, and cut down at once, 
yet the collector regards the white untouched paper as of more value—cash value— 
than Rembrandt’s work on the corner of it. 

Then there is the Six Bridge (B. 208),—a missing pepper pot, mustard tin, bottle of 
schnapps, or salt cellar at dinner-time ; Rembrandt was visiting Six; the Burgomaster 
must be amused, so Rembrandt makes a bet he can do a plate before they are found. 
He, the Burgomaster, seems to have lived on the very side of the road, anyway they were 
dining in the gutter. There is a copper on the premises. ‘The story-telling historians 
should have added grounded. It is drawn on, probably with a fork, bitten in with vine- 
gar and printed from, before the schnapps is brought ; either the servant was slow or it 
is a yarn—as bad a one anyway as the plate; and when Rembrandt was visiting Six 
he evidently carried his printing press in his pocket—another detail omitted by the 
historians. Yet all the authorities take story and plate seriously, and all blither se- 
riously about a print that could have been done by any of the pupils—and probably 
was—to play up to the story. To go carefully over the print is to prove this. The 
authorities rave over the “pure line” —trying to be on the right side. The line is pure 
enough, that is bitten, but look at the trees on the left—the foliage scribbled in, while 
it is impossible to tell on which side of the stream they are growing. The drawing of 
the grass and weeds on the right is characterless; the boat is careless beyond words ; 
the bridge is well drawn; the distant trees without form. Rembrandt has got the 
flat distance, but it does not equal any number of other of his plates of the flat country. 
Compare with it, for example, The Gold Weigher’s Field, that I have mentioned, in which 
every line has a meaning and it is pure line too; it makes no difference, however, whether 
the line is pure, the critics mean bitten not dry point—the all-important thing is: is 
the line good? is it expressive? is it absolutely necessary? No critic knows or could 


125 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


know. In the Omval, which too is pure line, there is a nasty black hole in the left-hand 
corner, put in to draw attention to the little scene under the trees, all out of scale how- 
ever—probably another subject which the old story-teller did not want to waste and so 
drew the design around it for the dealer and the clients. Some people say Rembrandt 
was a Jew, which would account for things, but his art is against this. But the best 
of all, far the best, is The Gold Weigher’s Field; and I return to it, again and again; 
here Rembrandt really did try, here every line and every spot is right and full of meaning, 
and indispensable; it is the best landscape he ever did, and that is enough, and it is 
safe to study from. It is the one plate that approaches Whistler’s many. 

The Mills disappear in mannerisms when compared with Whistler’s. Compare the 
Mill (B. 233) with Whistler’s Black Lion—only there is no comparison. 

There was one other crime that Rembrandt committed—and in the case of such a 
great artist to be inartistic is a crime—and that was to make an oval line across the top 
of his plates utterly destroying the shape of the design already fixed by the straight 
plate mark, or to make an oval frame on the plate itself, a sheer vulgarity; it is in- 
credible that he should have done so; it is comic to see little Rembrandts carefully 
prigging his artless trick, though they struggle vainly and clumsily to imitate his art. 

Rembrandt’s Beggars are most of them most interesting and evidently done straight 
from life, and the most elaborate,—Beggars at the Door of a House (B. 176),—is one of 
the best, but the numerous single figures are brim full of character as well as delightful 
in line. Of Rembrandt it may well be said in Whistler’s words: ‘‘The man who can 
draw anything can draw everything,” and his Hog and Shell are most interesting, 
but even more interesting is it to find Whistler competing with him in his Dog on the 
Kennel (M. 18) and the Wine Glass (M. 27). Yet here is just the difference: Haden 
imitated Rembrandt’s handling and style: Whistler evolved a style of his own and 
applied it at times to subjects somewhat similar to Rembrandt’s; he was carrying on 
tradition, Haden only imitating. This Wine Glass, and the drawings by Whistler in 
Sir Henry Thompson’s Catalogue of a Collection of Blue and White Nankin Porcelain 
prove that Whistler practised what he preached. Compare the laborious way in which 
Jacquemart works to get his glass, with Whistler’s simplicity. Buhot is to be studied 
for this too. Whistler got the feeling, the quality of things, as well as their surface 
and detail; Jacquemart only got the last and least. 

To return again and finally to Rembrandt’s large plates and his subject etchings, 
I should be a fool to say the Christ presented to the People (B. 76), The Three Crosses (B. 78), 
Wedding of Jason (B. 112) are not fine: they are. But I also say that these plates were 
an attempt on Rembrandt’s part to substitute for religious engravings, religious etch- 
ings, and fine as they are, they are not genuine artist’s etchings but worked up com- 
positions. Rembrandt, in every way, even though he did go bankrupt, was a clever 
man of business, and from the beginning was always exploiting his prints, producing 
states, and so running up prices as in the Hundred Guilders Print (B. 74)—even the title 
proves this. And he did endless work in scraping out; re-drawing and re-biting never 
seem to have bothered him; probably the pupils did the scraping; and even from the 

126 


REMBRANDT: CHRIST 
PRESENTED TO THE PEOPLE 


REMBRANDT: CHRIST PRESENTED TO THE PEOPLE. BITTEN 
LINE. PROBABLY ALSO DRY POINT AND BURIN 


This is the best by far as an etching, the best of Rembrandt’s big plates, and the best state of it. He 
repeatedly changed it all about, but it is made up of fewer, more vital, more meaning lines, than any 
of the others of his large plates. It is a masterpiece and it is one of the plates by which Rembrandt 
lives. It is a large plate but not an offence. 

The character in each of the figures is marvellous, and they are in this state mostly in outline, but 
there is endless variety in the outline, from the strength at the sides to the delicacy in the centre, 
and this arrangement brings the whole composition together. 

Another interesting matter about this composition is that Rembrandt did not go to Jerusalem for 
his Jews or his architecture, but used the buildings and the people and the costumes about him, 
there is nothing of Palestine in the plate, it is all Amsterdam. I am not defending this sort of faking. 
I only want to point out that Rembrandt did it, but it was the custom of his time and all previous 
time. It is only we moderns who have become accurate topographically and historically, but we 
have advanced little artistically. The old men etched as they wanted and the people accepted their 
work; now the people tell painters how to work and the painters accept their piffle, we are domi- 
nated by Cook’s Tours, college culture and photographs. 


128 





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REMBRANDT: THE 
THREE CROSSES 


REMBRANDT: THE THREE CROSSES. BITTEN LINE AND DRY 
POINT 


The Christ Presented to the People is the best of Rembrandt’s simple machines — this Three Crosses 
is the best of the complicated ones; he has carried light and shade in this print and in the various 
versions of it to the utmost limits ; it is magnificent and it is art — but it is not spontaneous etching like 
The Beggars and The Gold Weigher’s Field. They are greater etchings than this. It is more impressive 
and imposing — they are more subtle, more restrained, more what etchings should be — they are 
truer than this. 

But technically in drawing, in biting and especially in arrangement of the composition and in the 
light and shade it is magnificent and this is the finest, simplest state. 

Curiously too there is an attempt at Oriental and Roman costume in the figures, but they are not 
half so good as those which he has seen and drawn in the Christ Presented to the People. ‘This 
attempt is a worse fake than the other, doubtless a critic made him do it. 


132 

















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OF REMBRANDT 


first, as Michel says, his plates were valued as much for their rarity, as their art. He 
was the first etcher, probably, to print his own plates with tones, and in the large proofs 
there is as much printing and painting with ink as he knew how to put there. It is 
quite true that the landscapes and little portraits and figures seem to have been very 
cleanly wiped, but as Goulding once told me, he had found on proofs he had printed 
twenty-five years before a fine layer of powder instead of the tone he had put there, and 
when he dusted it off, the lines sharp and clear stood up, the tone in ink having dried up 
on the surface of the paper and not sunk in, and then turned to dust. How do we know 
the same thing has not happened to Rembrandt after three hundred years? Anyway, 
most of his subjects would have been far better for better printing, for more tone, and 
Whistler could have shown him how to print better. There was in the possession for a 
while of Mr. J. Kerr Lawson a collection of Rembrandt’s proofs, which came from 
Russia where they had been hidden for years; so fine, so strong, so rich that, not only 
because of the large price, but because of this richness and depth of the ink, dealers and 
collectors were afraid of them—afraid because of their excellence that they were fakes. 
On these certainly the ink had not dried out to powder. 

Rembrandt was a great artist but not so great an etcher as Whistler. 

This has now been admitted more or less even in England, and as a compensation 
Whistler has now been grabbed as a member of the British School. Even Mr. Campbell 
Dodgson says he was first 0° modern etchers, and recognises even in the past no greater 
master of art than Whistler save Rembrandt Van Rhyn. 

Prof. John C. Van Dyke has now too commenced a serious study—it has lasted some 
forty years—of Rembrandt’s paintings and Dr. Singer has scientifically treated his etch- 
ings.—Both these writers, while not depriving him of one great painting or etching, have 
removed from the list of his works many oils and plates, which if they were his, prove 
him capable of doing as bad work as the veriest duffer. That such work is signed only 
proves the signature was often forged or that he would sign anything. By denying that 
he is responsible for much that is bad or unimportant and should be lost, forgotten or 
destroyed these writers have done a great service to the artist and his art. 


135 





OF THE FOLLOWERS OF 
REMBRANDT AND OTHERS 


. 





OF THE FOLLOWERS OF CHAPTER VIII 
REMBRANDT AND OTHERS 


AM not going to discuss the Engravers and Etchers, the contemporaries, prede- 

cessors, or successors of Diirer, the work of Mantegna, and all the rest, nor the prints 

of the followers of Rembrandt. There was occasional good work done by occasional 
artists, but to take any sort of old stuff seriously, and discuss it elaborately because 
it is etched or old is simply a weariness of the flesh and a confusion to students. 

For this reason I have not referred to Millet, Corot, Daubigny, Jacque, amongst 
moderns. ‘Their etchings are either like their pen drawings, or else reproductions of 
their paintings. Nowand again, as in the case of Fortuny and Jongkind, there is genuine, 
real, and vital work to be found; but in the case of these men it is interesting more 
because of its personal, than its etched, quality. Jongkind, for example, is a most in- 
teresting etcher, but an abominable master for a student. 

Again, there is another tribe of etchers, the degenerate successors of Callot and 
Hollar who were great artists, once in a while great etchers too—masters of vital line— 
I mean the tribe of Cruikshank, Leech, Doyle, Phiz, and all the rest. Cruikshank 
had a wonderful invention, and in Ainsworth’s Tower of London his management of 
crowds of little figures is astonishing ; but the pitiful trash with which he, Doyle, and 
Leech, and the rest covered acres of copper is appalling, enough to copper bottom a 
fleet, or build a steel skyscraper, a positive proof that the world of Dickens’ time, led 
by Ruskin, was infantile in its appreciation of art. The story was everything, the 
method, the technique nothing. Seymour did create Mr. Pickwick, but he is artis- 
tically a pitiful creation, and so are the other members of the Club, but it is incredible 
that such stuff should ever have been discussed as art. Besides which, I am almost 
certain that these people never, or rarely, bit their own plates—(I am doubtful if even 
they drew the designs on the copper or steel)—but from the mass of work turned and 
ground out by them—without a bit of foul or over- or under-biting in it—they must 
have employed a regiment of hacks and ghosts. Other evidence is that in many of 
the plates machine-ruled skies and backgrounds are common. While apart from the 
grotesque figures, thousands of which are like the drawings of children, but not like 
post impressions made to appeal to a childish-minded generation, there is no observa- 
tion of any sort in them, nothing but a commonplace rendering of self-evident facts. 

If the student can make use of such stuff, it may be of use to him for suggestions ; 
otherwise it should be avoided, as poison and perdition in art. Just as Thackeray, 
Ruskin, and Dickens who praised it should be avoided as critics. The work of most of 
the British Academicians of the same period is as bad technically ; its only quality is 
its tiresome boring seriousness; now and again a plate may be found like some of 
Girtin’s or Cotman’s soft ground etchings, or Wilkie’s or Geddes’ figures and portraits, 
but the rest is a dreary desert to be shunned, especially those oases inhabited by ponder- 
ous bores like Samuel Palmer. Of all the men of that time Charles Keene is the only 
etcher worth study, and naturally he is unnoticed by Hamerton and reviled by Ruskin— 
with Rembrandt, however, by the latter. Rowlandson, Gilray, and the real caricaturists, 


139 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


the successors of Hogarth, are not worth study technically, any more than are the 
present-day caricaturists of England and America; mostly they were not troubled by 
art, or by technique, and so it is not necessary to trouble about them. They were with- 
out merit of any sort, and were therefore most popular with the masses and classes. 

The Dutch etchers preceding and following Rembrandt are without, as a rule, any 
technical merit—and the few who have any are feeble imitators of the master. For 
those who wish to know more, there are all the lives, histories, and examples necessary 
in all museums, but Rembrandt is the only etcher of his age. 


140 





” 


a 





OF DURER CHAPTER IX 


S for the few etchings by Diirer, they are in their way wonderful and should 

be studied; the little towns and cities in them are far better than Rem- 

brandt’s and are to be ranked with Whistler’s Thames plates; but in all 

it is evident that they are built up from sketches, not seen directly, as 
Whistler saw and etched similar backgrounds; though technically plates like The 
Cannon are superb. The Cannon is said to be engraved, but I have the courage to 
doubt it—the line is so vital, so superb. These were, it is said, etched on iron, and 
have, maybe in consequence of the metal, a distinct, strong, firm quality of line which 
is remarkable, in this plate of The Cannon especially, and it might be a good thing to 
etch on iron again to-day instead of copper, as it can apparently be well bitten, though 
I do not know what acid was used. However, I have an idea it was more Diirer’s 
ability as an artist than the iron plate which has made the print live. The printing 
in all the etchings is sharp and clean; the prints look as if the plates had been clean 
wiped like his engravings. 


Nore: For Durer illustration see plate of Great Cannon, page 11. 


143 





eS a beet ee 








OF VAN DYCK CHAPTER X 


N portraiture, no etcher in the past approached Rembrandt, and he does not ap- 

proach Whistler. The best was Van Dyck; and yet if one looks carefully at the 

series of heads done like Turner’s landscapes for future work by the professional 

engraver, one finds the line of little importance, rather with little character in it; 
it is wonderfully well done, but it is perfunctory. Rembrandt’s and Whistler’s line 
vibrates, is sensitive in drawing and biting. Van Dyck’s is hard, flat, and dry. Look 
at any of the Portraits. Van Dyck gets the modelling of the face mostly with a sort of 
dot, stipple-like, method ; the modelling is all right, the method is all wrong ; the drapery 
is all there, but the lines—I am referring to the original states of these plates, where the 
work is all by Van Dyck if they are by him—the etched lines are flat and stale. The only 
portrait of his that I know which has any real go and character is the Lucas Vostermans ; 
that is fine. Van Dyck, in his way, was trying to rival Holbein’s drawings, by etchings, 
and he did not succeed. There are but two etchers between Rembrandt and Goya 
who need be seriously, carefully looked at or considered—Callot and Hollar. I do not 
know if that great artist Hogarth did much etching, on his great plates. Some of the 
less important ones are etched, but the etching is not vital, and the etched work on the 
plates was not published—as etching. Callot at times is most spontaneous and, pas- 
sionate ; so far as I know the printing of his plates is always poor ; rather there is no print- 
ing in them—they are clean wiped; but the little figures, the little dramas, the little 
anecdotes, the little horrors all tell and tell well; in this he was, with Hollar, the fore- 
runner of that amazing contradiction Cruikshank. These two artists, too, are respon- 
sible for Meryon and the little Meryons, though most may not know it, at any rate admit 
it. Callot and Hollar were the first of the commercial manufacturing etchers, though 
they did their work well, far better than their successors, but horrors, fashions, wars, 
portraits of people and their palaces, views of towns, sport,—all were etched by them. 
They were journalistic etchers, illustrative etchers—their like has never been seen before 
or since—wonderful technicians, wonderful workmen, no fear of overproduction; and 
even in war time Hollar and Callot did their best work, like Goya. Callot made tooo 
plates, Hollar 2500, Cruikshank 5000. One boasted he had etched fifty kilometres of 
copper, another enough to sheathe the British Navy. And prolific as they were, techni- 
cally, artistically, historically, for they etched the things they saw and knew, they 
are far more worth studying than the heavenly hosts and holy families ground out of 
their inner consciousness, conscientiously for gain, by some of their less prolific con- 
temporaries, and more financially successful successors. 

All this talk of overproduction is rubbish—the work of dealers who want to do their 
business in the most comfortable fashion. Who ever regretted the thousands of draw- 
ings made by Beardsley, Houghton, Abbey, Daumier, Menzel? And yet if an etcher has 
ideas, something to say, the power to say it, he is told, if he do more than a plate or so 
a year, he is “‘spoiling his market.’”’ Such is the art and commerce of etching as preached 
and practised by the majority of etchers and dealers to-day, especially if in the employ 
of the modern up-to-date superior dealer who regards himself as of much more 


147 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


importance than the unfortunately necessary—or rather accidental etcher—whom he 
lives on. 

I have not attempted to make the artists discussed in this book picturesque or 
pathetic, or to consider satire, humour, intellectual or religious schemes or motives; 
all these may come into good work, but they have nothing to do with it. If Michael 
Angelo or Titian or Velasquez paints or draws a religious or historical subject, the stu- 
dent and the artist should study it for the paint, the line, the composition; the fact 
that it is religious or historical neither increases nor decreases its artistic importance; 
a well-etched dung-heap is of more importance artistically, technically, than a badly 
etched Nativity. Whistler has in this matter been most maligned—he never objected 
to subject—he only protested against badly etched, drawn, or painted subjects being 
taken seriously because of their titles, or the years of misdirected energy wasted over 
them, or the enormous sums made out of them. 


148 


NANTEUIL: PORTRAIT OF THE DUC DE MELLERAYE 
fen Y CK: PORTRAIT OF SNYDERS 


NANTEUIL: PORTRAIT OF THE DUC DE MELLERAYE. ENGRAY- 
ING. VAN DYCK: PORTRAIT OF SNYDERS. ETCHING 


These two portraits show the difference in portraiture between engraving and etching. The 
Nanteuil done laboriously with a single line, though there is cross hatching in many parts of it. 
The Van Dyck done freely with several sorts of lines and dots. The Nanteuil is after a painting 
or drawing, the Van Dyck is his own design, probably from life. 


150 














































































































































































































































































































Ded 


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TS. 











OF WILLIAM BLAKE CHAPTER XI 


LAKE should be studied; technically he was a trained etcher and en- 
graver, and what he got out of his knowledge of these arts was wonderful. 
But his best plates are his relief plates, in which, instead of being etched, 
his lines, drawn with acid-resisting varnish, are left in relief, the rest of the 
plate bitten and dug away like a wood engraving, made into line in relief. The colour 
was mostly put on by Blake or his wife afterwards, painted in with water colour. The 
lines and the text were printed usually in red, blue or brown. His engravings for the 
Book of Job are in subject and handling amongst the finest of modern works, but they 
are not etchings.—I have said his best plates are his “relief plates,”"—I should have said 
his most interesting for his best plates are his engravings and the greatest of them are in 
the Book of Job. Blake tried all sorts of mediums, wood engraving and even the newly— 
in his time—invented art of lithography. He was a most interesting artist and craftsman. 
It is possible, having made a lithographic pen drawing for The Polyautographic Al- 
bum, that Blake made his drawings in lithographic ink on paper—and wrote the text 
under them also, in lithographic ink, and transferred the whole to copper, then rolled 
the design up as the lithographer does, getting it stronger—and as the photo engraver 
does—to protect his lines, and bit the plate. And then printed it as a surface print on 
the copper plate press. This would give exactly the effect he got. If he worked in this 
“way Blake was the inventor of mechanical line engraving. 
Or he may have made the drawing with Dragons Blood, also used by photo 
engravers. 


155 


OF WILLIAM BLAKE 


This artist’s books, those he wrote, illustrated and printed are most interesting. Blake was a trained 
engraver and knew what he wanted and how to get it—as the books prove—he was not one of those 
‘imaginative artists”’ who reek with imagination and are devoid of expression—he was full of uplift and 
message which he could put in words and lines—and not merely talk and cackle about—as do so many 
of his imitators and successors—who if they had been his contemporaries would either never have heard 
of him or have ignored him. But Blake is now firmly established among the correct, and he was also an 
artist—as most of his sort are not. So for once the collectors are right—though Blake has been appro- 
priated by the artless too. Blake when he made his books was doing in metal successfully what Sene- 
felder was attempting unsuccessfully in stone—not on stone—to engrave and etch it—before he dis- 
covered lithography, Blake knew of Senefelder and his work for he made a drawing in pen and litho- 
graphic ink in the manner of the engravings for the Book of Job and it was printed in Senefelder’s volume 

Examples of Polyautography—(see Lithography and Lithographers). 

Blake either drew on the polished copper—maybe, from the look of the prints, zinc or some other metal 
plate—I never saw in any authority any definite statement as to what he did use and I do not know 
what became of his plates—with an acid resisting ink or varnish, as a matter of fact, lithographic ink and 
chalk might have been used, and then bit the exposed, undrawn surface of the plate away, exactly like 
a wood block, but he inked and wiped the bitten plates like etchings, cleaning the surface and leaving 
ink in the etched parts. There was in some of them much foul and uneven biting and I do not know how 
deeply the etched parts were bitten. He also lettered on the metal in reverse, the poems, or some one 
did it for him, as the lettering is all the same in the same style—I know nothing of this. Or else as in 
lithography the text was written on paper and transferred to the plate I am not sure that he did it him- 
self. But, because it is probable that the engraved text is his own, but to avoid or remove foul biting 
in the lettering which, though on the same plate, was printed like a wood block, the two sorts of inking 
being used—must have been extremely difficult. But the more I look at his books the less sure I am of 
how he engraved and printed them. The colour is said to have been added in water colour by Mrs. 
Blake, or transferred to the plates or prints from some sort of painted or inked pad. The method died 
with the artist, but if Linnell had only paid as much attention to describing Blake’s methods of mak- 
ing his plates and his prints as he did to collecting the proofs and the volumes, he would have done 
a greater service to artists, for he, John Linnell was an artist—as well as a collector and might have 
left a valuable record, as well as a fine collections of the works of a most remarkable contemporary 
artist whom he had the sense to appreciate. 

The more I look at these prints, in Jerusaiem especially, the more I am amazed at their technique and 
puzzled by it. Every line in the figures has been drawn with a pen or a brush and in the print Blake 
has kept all this feeling of brush work, not turned it into a metal engraved line. Did he use surface 
printing lithography? I have no certain knowledge as to how the work was done and the authorities 
know no more. The plates might prove his methods. I do not know if any are in existence. 


156 





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OF GOYA AND ROPS CHAPTER XII 


WO etchers who have greatly distinguished themselves in the last hundred 

years are Francisco Goya and Felicien Rops, Goya for his aquatints, Rops 

for his soft ground plates. Goya, after Meryon, has been of the greatest 

service to the literary critic—his life, his loves, his mysteries, his sarcasms, 
have been so dwelt upon by these hangers-on of art, that his art has been forgotten in 
their anxiety to praise, or blame, or explain his life and his subjects. As to his work, 
his etchings, considered as etching—as etched line—are of no value whatever. He 
could, however, in his versions of Velasquez,—they are not reproductions, but sketches 
of the paintings,—give in a remarkable fashion the look and feeling of the originals, 
despite the abominable printing. I have never seen a decently printed proof of one of 
Goya’s plates. Those printed at the Calcografica, Madrid, are as prints worthless, yet 
they are ground out all the time for the benefit of the amateur and collector. 

Line apparently never interested Goya any more than Tiepolo and Fragonard, 
whose etchings all possess the same defects of want of care, thought, or pleasure in line. 

By aquatint Goya got wonderful results—that was his medium; the ground was 
laid after the etching had been made, and save in the lights, completely ate up the line; 
even this aquatint ground, technically, is neither well laid nor bitten, being mostly 
a flat tone, or an attempt at one, badly printed; often there are holes in it, and one 
rarely finds a print which does not look overbitten, while many of the plates have 
been worked on and patched up with the roulette and dry point, most likely by civil 
service government etchers. But they are still tremendously effective, full of life and 
go, as well as mystery and doubtfulness. He was trying, they were mucking up. 
There are four series of plates, one sketches of paintings, mostly after Velasquez, the 
Disasters of War, The Caprices, far the best of all, and the Bull Fights, and even in the 
vile prints all well worth studying. 

Felicien Rops’ aquatints, dry points, and soft ground etchings are, on the other 
hand, of the greatest technical accomplishment, printed by himself or by a capable man. 
They are of the greatest interest to students; their morals, or want of them, are not in 
question. These two artists have carried on tradition, or rather the latter has, in a 
brilliant manner. Two Englishmen who also did remarkable aquatints and soft ground 
etchings well worth study, are Girtin and Cotman. But they invented or stole processes, 
and their art and their methods died with them. 

There is another phase of Goya’s work which must not be overlooked—his experi- 
ments; the British, Madrid, Berlin, and other Print Rooms contain a large number of 
these; whether they are original drawings in lithographic chalk and ink or transfers 
from etchings to stone, or transfers from drawings on paper to metal, it is impossible to 
say; they have been catalogued by one authority as drawings, and the same subjects 
in another collection are described by another authority as prints. As an etcher, I am 
unable to say what they are, except this: they are mostly as bad as interesting tech- 
nically, and I am sure copies or forgeries, nearly all of them, and unworthy of the 
artist or of preservation save as curiosities. 


161 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


There are, however, several subjects in the British Museum, notably a drawing called, 
or I have so called it, The Garrotted; it may be a print, an etching of the same subject, 
or a lithographic transfer worked on. ‘There is also a Duel, very poor, most of it, and a 
reproduction, or rather copy of it; but how this was done I cannot say. And lastly a 
series of small figures, heads with numbers on them, which I believe to be forgeries, or 
copies, only I do not know where the originals are, drawn in lithographic chalk; or else 
they are extraordinarily good prints from chalk drawings, or soft ground etchings; they 
are variously catalogued by various authorities; there is no doubt that most of them, as 
drawings, are beneath contempt; even the gentle Hamerton describes some of Goya’s 
work as ‘‘rotten,” but he had never seen these, I think, which are worse. 

A very brilliant technician of whose work far too little was known during his life was 
Felix Buhot, a master craftsman. 

His studies of Paris and London were an inspiration to many moderns. He it was 
who first showed that there was picturesque material for etching in a cab stand, a kiosk, 
a landing stage. 

His prints of boats arriving at Dover or Folkestone had the rain and the wind in 
them, but he was never satisfied with leaving things alone, and the design wandered 
often all over the plate. There were edges of bare copper to begin with, and these got re- 
marques, and attempts, and essays, scribbled all over them. I am not sure how much 
this was done for the collector and how much for himself, but it was most amusing. In 
his printing—for he printed his own plates—there were all sorts of experiments with 
coloured inks, and the plate was printed on coloured paper; he too was a mighty hunter 
of paper, and when he found it, most generous with his find; but not content with 
the beauty of the old paper, he tinted that with tea, with tobacco, with anything that 
would give tone. Then there were inscriptions on the margin etched in, and dedications 
written on, and finally a monogram in red appeared on those proofs he was pleased with. 
It was, as I say, amusing, but that part of it scarce art, though at times these little bits 
were artfully put in. Buhot also made etchings of Chinese and Japanese objects as 
Jacquemart had done, though they more resemble Whistler’s Blue and White China 
drawings; there are ten of these designs, the subjects taken from Philip Burty’s col- 
lection, and they were published as a set, and they vary in merit. He worked by all 
sorts of methods ; some of his smallest sketches of country life are the best, especially the 
oldman and woman on a rainy evening staggering home under their wind-blown umbrella. 

Another artist who devoted some time and plates to rendering articles of virtu 
was Bracquemond, but to me at least Bracquemond is far more interesting as a repro- 
ductive engraver and etcher of his own and other men’s work. His portraits of him- 
self and de Goncourt are magnificent, but not real spontaneous etching. In portraiture, 
in reproduction, he might have reaped fame and honours which were absolutely denied 
him; but it is a dangerous thing to be a prophet or an artist in this country—the best, 
the safest thing is to be a follower, an imitator. 

Legros’ trick, which he played hundreds or thousands of times, was a feeble imita- 
tion of Mantegna’s vigorous line: in relief or shadow—straight lines drawn at an angle 


162 


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F. GOYA: MALA NOCHE AQUATINT 


Goya like other great artists was a master of many mediums—or worked in many—and he is one 
of the few great artists who used aquatint to any extent for original work. Felicien Rops is another, 
but it is rather difficult to say how much of the work Rops did himself, and then maybe heard of Goya. 
This is a very good example in arrangement and colour, as it ranges from intense black to shining white. 
The print was made from a good proof and good proofs of Goya’s are rare, the aquatint having quickly 
worn and then been patched up; probably later, by some bungling duffer, possibly in the Calcographic 
Gallery at Madrid where modern prints can be obtained—or could—before the war. 

As in mezzotinting there is an outline etching of the subject under the ground etched before the aquatint 
ground was laid—as described in the text—and the etched lines in black can be plainly seen in 
the whites and grays of the finished plate. 

When the etching has been made, as in the plate, the aquatint ground is deposited all over it either 
by the dust or resin process. The high lights are then stopped out, and the plate is put in the bath; 
the first tone bitten and then stopped out, and the same process repeated, till the extreme darks 
are reached. The tones are usually rather flat, it is difficult to get variety in them, but they have 
if flat, a rather decorative quality. 


164 








& 





FELICIEN ROPS: THE DEVIL SOWING TARES OVER PARIS 
It is difficult to get a plate of Rops which shows his methods and at the same time can be shown—but 


—though it does not reproduce well this is a magnificent example in biting and soft ground and aqua- 
tint—which are described. 


168 


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OF GOYA AND ROPS 


of forty-five degrees, a useful background, but quite meaningless. Legros is even more 
meaningless and much more mannered. In England he is taken most seriously though 
Hamerton scarce mentions him. He was never accepted by the Academy which has 
accepted his imitators; but he is so easy—easier than Meryon—to imitate. He had 
nothing to say of his own; he was overpowered by the past, carried on no tradition, 
and save for a few paintings, will not be recognized or remembered in the future. 
Possibly the fact that he gave up his country for another—as no artist, no patriot 
would do—may account for his failure, save in popularity. There are a few goodish 
portraits—but much better have been made by his students—there are a few goodish 
figure subjects and landscapes, but there is no feeling for real character or actual 
modernity in them. He has not carried on tradition. 

Jacquemart was a most amazing technician and glorified articles of virtu and im- 
mortalized old shoes with incredible surface accuracy. 


171 


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TURNER 


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OF J. M. W. TURNER CHAPTER XIII 


URNER’S Etchings for the Liber Studiorum, for the mezzotints, though 

never intended to be seen or rather published—at least it is said only some 

twelve sets were printed—are very fine, some of them. Etchings such as 

these are merely a guide to the engraver who is a copyist. If the artist, 
the original artist, scraped his own plates, there is no reason, in fact it is frequently a 
defect, to put in the etched lines beneath the mezzotint. They are supposed to 
strengthen the work, or to guide the mezzotinter; they frequently show through it. 
Turner, however, etched these lines with great feeling; he gave the bigness of his de- 
sign, the bigness of nature, with the fewest possible and the most expressive needle 
strokes, and was the only great British etcher of his time. The plates are very uneven 
in merit both as compositions and in technique—and it is pretty certain that Turner 
did not etch several of them. Some, it is said, are signed W. S. W., one of his en- 
gravers. Even in Turner’s case the word “etch” is very vague and it is impossible to 
say whether it really means drawing or biting or both. Ruskin’s etchings after Turner 
in his manner, are some of them most accomplished. Others are so perfectly bitten that 
it is evident they are the work of engravers—others are very clumsy—but many are 
drawn with the most vital lines and bitten with consummate art. Though Ruskin, 
Rawlinson, Thornbury, Hamerton, Finberg have written volumes about the intellectual, 
moral, and commercial aspects of the Liber there is scarce a line of reliable technical in- 
formation about these etchings. 

Turner’s mezzotints, the few he did, there are about a dozen, were fine—that is 
in the early proofs, trials when the plates were, he—or the public—thought, half finished ; 
for nearly all finished mezzotints, to me, look played out, scraped and burnished and 
grey, till there is no life left in them. Turner and his engravers tinkered at these plates 
—till the confusion over states has become to artists incredible. No one but Turner 
knew anything about them and his records, comments, and marks are unintelligible. 
Even Lucas’ prints after Constable’s Landscapes suffer in this way, but all this is the 
fault of the mezzotinter, who is rarely an original creative artist. Mezzotint, however, 
is most deceptive, most tedious. The design one has scraped on the rocked plate looks 
beautifully, and prints abominably, all black and smudgy, all wanting endless work 
before it is right—and if the artist gets mad and goes for the plate, he digs white or 
black holes in it and ruins it. Turner’s prints were printed mostly in a hot red brown, 
a clumsy attempt to imitate—apparently with cheap ink—his sepia originals—or other 
originals. Mezzotint, beautiful as it is, is scarce an art for artists. The copies, for 
example, of artists’ rapid sketches are only produced by long hours of labour and 
drudgery by the plodding mezzotinter. Soft ground, aquatint, sandpaper ground, or 
the roulette are far easier to work, to manage. Few artists have found it easy to 
scrape or to print original mezzotints. Whistler tried once to prove a plate by Josey 
and made an awful mess of it. 

Claude and Canaletto are the direct opposites to Turner. All three were great 
artists, but only one was a great etcher—Turner. Claude’s designs, sepia drawings, 


175 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


pen drawings, are magnificent. The Liber Veritatis was never intended for mezzo- 
tinting—it was but a record of his paintings for reference—Earlom’s engravings 
were not made until years after Claude’s death. In line, his etchings are poor and 
empty or crowded and niggled. Canaletto is still worse, that is, if the etchings at- 
tributed to him were by him. The Venetian plates were intended to be worked on by 
others in line. But Canaletto’s and Claude’s lines, unlike those of Turner, have little 
feeling. The original designs become quite unimportant as etchings. And the same 
is true of Piranesi; his compositions are fine, but he never, even in the Carceri,—his 
best work,—depends on the vital line, and technically all these men with especially one 
of their descendants, Samuel Palmer, should be avoided by etchers. Piranesi’s prints 
make a good frieze, or line a stairway well, but they are not good to set before students ; 
he had not even the grandiose feeling ; his perspective is as poor as his industryisgreat. Of 
course he is far better than the hacks of to-day, but he is not a great etcher by any means. 

There are certain big painters who have been little etchers—men who had no real 
feeling for line, whose feeling was for colour and tone, and who only could express them- 
selves by these methods. 

No better examples are to be found than Claude and Canaletto, both great painters, 
great draughtsmen. Claude’s designs, his wash and pen drawings, are unrivalled, 
though many have tried to imitate or surpass him; but when Claude etched, he lost 
his freedom of working, of expression. He could put down an effect with a sweep of 
his pen, or with his brush make a splendid sky or a gloomy foreground; he tried and 
failed to get the same effects with a multitude of meaningless lines on copper. Line— 
as line—meant nothing to him when he etched. Besides which his etchings are com- 
positions ; the same towns, ports, palaces, ships, and people that one finds in his paint- 
ings, reappear in his prints. In the paintings, and more so in the drawings, we de- 
light in these compositions; in the etchings they are tiresome, proving that he only 
copied himself. Some of the apparently unfinished plates are better; but he was not 
among the great etchers, nor was Canaletto. There is in his work—if it is his work, 
for this I doubt—the same stodginess and elaboration, the same trying for tone, for 
elaborate mechanical skies, for worked out foregrounds. But Canaletto was a painter, 
his drawings are usually tiresome, and those in that great collection, the Correr Museum, 
in Venice, I do not believe are his work at all, but mere architectural schemes set up by 
pupils mostly, slightly touched by him for the professional etcher and engraver. The 
Thirty-Eight Views of Venice by Visentini, ruled, laboured, uninteresting, save as show- 
ing most clearly to the student Canaletto’s methods of composition and perspective 
(and in these matters he is supreme), are uninspiring. There are a few plates carried 
out with more freedom than the thirty-eight views, but they look like pen drawings and 
have no spontaneous, only laborious, qualities in them. 

There are any number of French, Dutch, Flemish, and Italian painters who once 
in a while make a good plate, but there is no supreme etcher among them. But if one 
will study the best etchings by the best men, when a fine work by an unknown etcher is 
found the student will recognize it, though this is more than Hamerton and those who 


176 


OF J. M. W. TURNER 


have followed him have been able to do. The average critic-collector-curator can tell 
you all about the three lines in a corner of this plate, the scratch at the bottom of that, 
the wonderful paper the other is printed on; but whether the design, the drawing, or 
printing is good is beyond them and does not matter. The cataloguing of trials and of 
states and of numbers alone does. 


Nore. In the History of the Liber Studiorum of J. M. W. Turner, by A. J. Finberg, published 
while this book was being revised, the author states that Turner only made five—I think it is—of the 
etchings for the Liber, but which they are I do not know, and about the same number of the mezzotints 
have, for a long while, been known to have been engraved by him, in fact Turner in most cases gives the 
name of the engraver of the mezzotint in the lettered state of the plate, and also in this state the words 
“drawn and etched by J. M. W. Turner, Esq. R. A.” are engraved and printed on it. Finberg therefore 
proves Turner, his hero, the man to whose work he has given the important years of his life, a liar, a 
fraud, a swindler—and Finberg does this perfectly naively, not seeing or understanding what he has done. 
Ruskin, Rawlinson who made the three first catalogues, and Stopford Brooke, who described the Liber, 
are silent in the matter, but Brooke says Turner etched the plates, so Finberg says virtually—“ They 
are only etchings’”’—the critic again—what does it matter whether the R. A., like Herkomer, tried to 
delude the public or not? But it does matter, and for two reasons: first, because Turner had no busi- 
ness to take the credit for making etchings he did not make—and second, if he did not make them, 
who did? and why did Turner say he did? I think Finberg is correct even if he has, an an etcher, killed 
his hero. For Turner, in letters and notes to his engravers, tells them how to make and correct them 
—the plates—and that he will touch up the etchings, proving that he, Turner, was conniving at a 
fraud on collectors, for they are signed, as I say, “drawn and etched by J. M. W. T. Esquire, R. A.” The 
irony of it. My reason for believing that Turner did not do the etchings is because they have been re- 
versed in copying the drawings—the original sepia drawings—or rather the pen lines in them by Turner, 
and to reverse them must have been a long and tedious affair. But, on the other hand, the pen lines 
in the drawing and the copied etched lines in the prints are magnificent in their vital directness, simplic- 
ity and force, though this Finberg neither sees nor understands, and such lines could not have been 
invented by any one save Turner, but they could be copied, more or less, by a skillful engraver en- 
gaged in a swindle, or an innocent deception, and if Finberg is correct the affair is a swindle. But if 
Turner did not make these etchings, who did? for all the best of them ‘are by the same hand I am cer- 
tain. Here is another problem, for the authorities, and if Mr. Finberg goes a little further he may dis- 
cover that Turner did not paint his oils or water colours, but that they were done by a syndicate, and 
Turner was only the Esquire, R. A. salesman. 

I thought, after seeing Finberg’s statements, that Turner might have made the etchings first, 
and done the sepia drawings over the prints but this is not so, for I have seen the drawings in the Na- 
tional and Tate Galleries—and we now have Turner’s written evidence that he did not do the etchings, 
only lied to the public about them. But who ever made them they are all made in the same manner 
and are interesting and valuable works of art, the greater number of them, and I believe most were 
drawn, or copied and etched by the same hand. Whether Turner swindled the public or not don’t 
matter so much, the etchings do, and most are very fine. 


Note To Tutrp Epition: Hamerton in “ Etching and Etchers”’ says positively that Turner made the 
Etchings for the Liber Studiorum. 


177 


J. M. W. TURNER: ST. CATHARINE’S HILL. BITTEN LINE 
ETCHED BY TURNER. MEZZOTINTED BY J. C. EASLING 


In several instances Turner not only made the etching under the mezzotint, but printed proofs from 
the etched plates. This is one of the finest; every single line in it is most expressive and most decora- 
tive. The biting too is extremely well done. Yet all this is hidden in the finished plate which is 
covered with the mezzotint ground. The etching is used to strengthen the drawing and also as a guide 
to the engraver when at work. 

These Liber Studiorum mezzotints were all made, except a few by Turner, by professional mezzotinters, 
and are of varying merit. They were copied but very freely from Turner’s sepia, or monochrome 
studies in the National Gallery, London. Turner, though he did little of the work, took a great interest 
in it, and endlessly revised and corrected the proofs and generally made the engravers’ lives a burden. 
Like many other marvels of engraving it was a complete financial fiasco—so great that it was 
not even completed during Turner’s life time and only finished by Sir Frank Short who has made 
several new plates from the drawings, most admirably. Not only in this plate are the graceful trees 
to be admired and their lines delighted in, but in this etching, as in Whistler’s Bridge, the lines of 
the road, the hedge, and the ground carry the eye right up to the abbey, unobtrusively but surely. 
It is rather comic however to compare Turner’s figures and animals with Rembrandt’s or Whistler’s, 
I have added a reproduction of the finished mezzotint which shows Turner’s completed design—an 

engraving of his sepia drawing from which the prints were made. There is an undoubted charm in the 

added colour—but to me the pure etching—the pure line—is just as expressive and it renders truly the 

subject with the fewest and most vital lines, the end and aim of etching. It is most interesting to com- 
pare the original drawing with the etching, and that with the engraving in mezzotint made on it, 
whether by Turner or another engraver, in almost every case Turner added or made the engraver add 
the more subtle effects in skies and water specially, though some of the unfinished trial proofs—un- 
touched—are the finest of all. If access cannot be had to the originals A. J. Finberg’s History of the 
Liber Studiorum, may be consulted. Finberg states Turner did not make the etchings but who ever 
made this etching made most of the rest in the Liber, and they are fine works. 


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OF SEYMOUR HADEN CHAPTER XIV 


UST as to-day it is the thing for imitators to prig from Meryon’s Paris, so a few 
years ago they prigged from Rembrandt’s landscapes. Now to imitate Rem- 
brandt’s mistakes and mannerisms is easy and no one did so better than the late 
Sir Seymour Haden. But the Surgeon Etcher had something to say for himself, 
and when he etched plates like the Sunset in Ireland, Grim Spain, Kilgarn Castle, or 
the drawing of the ship in the Breaking Up of the Agamemnon, or when he copied Turner’s 
Calais Pier, he proved himself an etcher; in the latter he rivals Rembrandt. But 
most of the time he was struggling away with nature on one hand and Rembrandt’s 
proofs on the other. He tried for and got all Rembrandt’s tricks—little of Rembrandt’s 
art. Haden was the first of the modern plodders, the first to make etching pay, the 
first to hire someone to do his work for him—Goulding the printer—the first, and still, 
I imagine, far the most successful business etcher of modern times. Mr. Keppel said 
—and he should know—Haden sold ten thousand copies of The Breaking Up of the 
Agamemnon. Apropos, I remember one story he told me in his own house. How he 
went down the Thames to Greenwich, one day, to a whitebait dinner with the members 
of the Royal Academy Club possibly, and he saw the subject, The Breaking Up of the 
Agamemnon, and just went and sat on a pile, and pulled the plate out of his dress coat-tail 
pocket, and etched the ship and forgot the dinner, and then came back the next day at 
sunset and put in the background. “And what sized plates do you carry in your ordinary 
coat-tail pockets, Mr. Haden?” said a guest. After that the subject was changed. 

The drawing (however it was done) of the hull of the old ship is marvellous. What 
a cheeky incompetent Hamerton was when he had the audacity to copy it, to prove 
something or other, somewhere or other, and completely lost the drawing. Haden’s 
translation—which is what it is—of Turner’s Calais Pier is masterly, the swing and 
movement done with the fewest lines, amazing; and it is a huge plate. But plates 
like Shere Mill Pond are cloying in their prettiness, while the dark masses of trees are 
messes. Haden’s work of this sort is not to be compared to Lalanne’s. Lalanne is 
graceful, Haden clumsy. Yet in two or three of the dry points, Sunset in Ireland, 
the best by far, where he is quite himself, he is exquisite, in feeling, in line, and in colour ; 
this is one of the most beautiful dry point landscapes ever made, far better than any 
by Rembrandt, far better than any of Whistler’s; but in this case Haden was doing 
something for himself. I forget if it was this plate he is said to have thrown away in a 
stable in disgust and resurrected years after. 

Haden’s weakness and commercialism and artlessness are proved generally how- 
ever by his steeling all his plates, and then turning them over to Goulding to print— 
print as much alike as he could, so that Haden only had to sign them; and he, Haden 
is responsible for starting or carrying out this shop idea of printing which has debauched 
British and American etching. Haden had a press and Goulding to run it after the 
plates were steel-faced in a sort of conservatory behind his dining-room, where I saw 
it in Hertford Street—and I have also seen him at work in his study at the top of the 
house where I believe he did the fine Out of the Study Window. 


183 


F. SEYMOUR HADEN: SUNSET IN IRELAND DRY POINT 


The most poetical dry point landscape that exists. ‘These are strong words—and so are those I have 
used about the other plates in the book—but I have selected the best etchings—those which are 
universally acknowledged to be the best, and the ones which should be known to all lovers of prints, 
and prized by print lovers, and therefore they demand the highest praise. No one has better rendered 
the heavy dense foliage of the summer woods, or so well contrasted it, with the printed sky reflected 
in the slow moving water, or better put the design on the plate. This plate was evidently done 
straight from nature, probably at one sitting, with the dry point. Work as true as this can not be 
faked. Haden once in a while was a very great artist, yet I believe it was this plate which he was 
so disgusted with that he threw it away in a stable, only like Rossetti, to resurrect it years after and 
find in it a great work, as Rossetti found his poems to be when he resurrected them. 


184 








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HADEN : BREAKING UP 
OF THE AGAMEMNON 


F. SEYMOUR HADEN: BREAKING UP 
OF THE AGAMEMNON. BITTEN LINE 


No finer etching in pure line was ever made by a British artist, in it Haden surpassed himself, and 
the reason was that having studied and absorbed Rembrandt and Whistler he, in this plate, carried on 
tradition and did something for himself. 

The plate is fine because every line in it means something, expresses something. Every line is bitten 
with the thought in Haden’s mind of how he wanted it to print. The balance of light and shade also 
is remarkable and with a very few lines and masses he makes the glow and glitter of the sunset 
and the long lines of the tide. In this plate too the lines are not only expressive, but one set leads 
to the Hospital and beyond to the setting sun, and another to the gaping hull of the ship and the 
hull is the finest thing in line that has ever been done in etching. 

Haden told me he did the plate in two afternoons on the spot, but there are early proofs which were far 
from successful, and there must have been days in the studio before he got it right. He also made a 
mezzotint of the same subject but neither that nor any of his other attempts at mezzotint are to be 


compared to his work in line. 


188 





MODERN MEN CHAPTER XV 
FELIX BUHOT: WESTMINSTER BITTEN LINE 


Among modern etchers Buhot was one of those rare artists who have something to say for themselves 
and say it in their own way. Buhot made endless experiments in all sorts of methods and on many of 
his plates, as on this one, with its reminiscences of London. These were done to please himself 
or to please collectors of remarque proofs, and they were rarely scraped off, or the plate cut down to the 
real design uponit. Idonot care so much for this plate—it is hard and photographic with a scrawly 
sky but it is characteristic. Buhot was also a mighty hunter of old paper—possessing a large stock 
of it—and he made many experiments in tinting or soaking the paper in tea, coffee, and other colouring 
matters. He also at times printed his plates in two or three colours, that is, he would ink the border 
with the sketches, in one colour or tone, and the main design in another. He also used a little coloured 
stamp of an owl and the letters F B on either side it, when he was particularly pleased with a proof. 
I do not think he added to the merit of his etchings by these games, but despite them they are good 
and he occupies a distinct niche in modern art. 


190 





MAXIME LALANNE: RUE DES MARMOUSETS AND A CUSSET. 
BOTH BITTEN LINE 


For a generation Maxime Lalanne typified Etching in France, he flourished while Meryon went mad, 
Lalanne succeeded while Buhot struggled. True Jacquemart and Bracquemond and Manet etched, but 
Lalanne was the etcher. He was patronized by royalty and petted by young ladies, and was com- 
missioned to illustrate all the books, with landscape and architectural illustrations, which contained 
etchings during his lifetime. He was boomed by Hamerton and brought to England to illustrate the 
Portfolio. But besides—and despite all this—he and a few reproductive etchers of France, Waltner 
and Brunet Desbaines, were consummate craftsmen. Lalanne wrote the best technical book of its 
day. This was ably and well translated by S. R. Koehler, who did as much—and in the same way— 
for American etching as Hamerton did in England. Lalanne was a master of every method of making 
a copper plate. But Hamerton regards it of equal importance that “ he was the first artist who ever 
received knighthood for his qualities as an Etcher.” Hamerton rightly says “no one ever etched so 
gracefully,” and his plates are graceful and gracious and display, every one of them, his love of beauty ; 
and the line in most is vital, but most are too sweet, too drawing-booky. Still, as Hamerton says, he 
was “‘a master of his craft.” 

For simple, direct, straightforward work, built up on simple lines, showing the construction of a street 
scene, this Rue des Marmousetes is a marvel in every way, itis better than Meryon, and Lalanne 
was, in this plate, doing Meryon’s subjects. I do not believe, however, that this was done from nature, 
any more than Meryon’s plates. Instead of giving facts like this, which would be useful to students, 
Hamerton and the other authorities tell that a pastry cook who lived in the street, with the aid of a 
barber murdered a man who came to be shaved and made, says a French critic of art, “des patés”’ ; 
and Hamerton adds, “‘the pies were highly appreciated by the public.” The excellence of the study 
of architecture, the truth of the perspective, the roughness of the pavé, is seen and felt, but the pies 
are the important matter. Lalanne drew trees beautifully with beautiful lines, a secret that he 
shared with Claude and Turner and Corot. Years ago I wrote the following about him, and I wrote 
rightly : 

“To my mind, at least, Lalanne was one of the most exquisite and refined illustrators of architecture 
who ever lived. His ability to express a great building, a vast town, or a delicate little landscape has 
never been equalled, I think, by anybody but Whistler. To a certain extent he was mannered; so 
was Rembrandt; Whistler is the only man I know of who is not. 
“Lalanne probably acquired his refinement of handling in the production of his innumerable delicate 
etchings. .. . His etching of Richmond and the Thames, which appeared in the Portfolio, is the 
most exquisite example of his work I have seen in any English periodical.” 

Some of his best work, but mostly in photogravure, was published in Hollande a vol d@’oiseau by Henri 
Havard. As simple direct line the plates are well worth study in these days when sloppiness in 
attempts to disguise incompetence, calls itself cubism. 

Lalanne’s dry points too are very fine, and so are his soft ground prints. Everything he touched he 
made beautiful, only often he made it too pretty. 

He loved Bordeaux, his native town, and returned to etch it again and again, always under some 
new effect, though he frequently worked from the same spot. But whether he treated a little village, 
a great landscape, or a lovely river he always got beauty, and that was obtained by the useof the most 
beautiful lines bitten and printed in a perfect fashion. 

The small Cusset proves exactly what I have said about this. 


192 

















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FELIX BRACQUEMOND: EDMOND DE GONCOURT, EARLY STATE 


Bracquemond was one of the most accomplished technicians of modern times. His portraits are amaz- 
ing—and the Goncourt is the most amazing of all, worthy to be ranked with those of Diirer or Nanteuil 
but it is etched, theirs engraved, there is the same sureness of line, the same character, and in some, it 
is evident how much he studied Diirer and the other engravers. Though Meryon called him a real 
etcher, most of his work is not spontaneous but worked out through many states, real states, not dealer 
collector baits—but there are certain studies of water fowl which might be studied with advantage by 


194 





* 


RS SES es ass i icin el 





BRACQUEMOND: EDMOND DE GONCOURT, FINISHED STATE 


some of those who today supply the demand for that sort of commodity in etching—and notably a study 
of a crow nailed to a door which proves how much he was indebted to Japanese prints which he with Whis- 
tler made known to Europe and even to the Japanese themselves. There are several states of this plate, 
and the first and last are reproduced, showing the way he developed it—and it must be remembered 
that in every case the ground had to be removed before each printing—the plate regrounded and rebitten 
—as described in the chapter on regrounding, another proof of Bracquemond’s mastery of his medium. 


195 


~. 
i 





WILLIAM STRANG: THE SWINEHERD 


Strang was the most varied etcher who ever lived and if he had lived before Rembrandt he might have 
been a greater artist than the greater Dutchman. Strang’s trouble was that though he had endless 
messages to give the world he never had his own way of giving them. He started under Legros—who 
I do not think has enough character to be included here—and when Legros showed Strang, Holroyd— 
and maybe Short—what had been done in the past, the two first did not try to carry on basing them- 
selves on the masters—but like Morris they harked back, they did not carry on. Strang was a little 
master of the past, not as he might have been, for he could etch, a great master in the present and pos- 
sibly in the future. The Swineherd has no modernity no observation of things around him in it, but it is 
extraordinarily well done. It was always thus with Strang, he did the things around him, the Salvation 


196 





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WILLIAM STRANG: KIPLING 


Army but it was not the Salvation Army of his time but the Round Heads of the Civil War—marching 
not to Hyde Park but Worcester. Look at the man’s coat and his staff and the pig pen, they were things 
he got out of books and prints—not what he saw—he changed his style with the years and after he had 
finished with the past, he took up the cheapest, easiest, slovenliest French work, ending by imitating 
Forain’s tricks not his drawing, but Forain and Bauer who influenced Strang at the end can’t etch as well 
as Zorn. His portraits are his best etchings—this one of Kipling is amusing but his study of Emery 
Walker and some other of his contemporaries were far better—but this one is Strang himself, and if he 
had only been himself he would have been a bigger and a better artist—and he could have been. 


197 





AUGUSTE LEPERE: L’7INVENTOIRE 


Lepére was an artist who could express himself in any medium—and a serious artist—not an incom- 
petent duffer who funked things because he could not do them as is the fashion today for the benefit 
of the artist and the bewilderment of the art lover who always swallow the rubbish and reject the 
jewel thrown at them, and more docilely here than elsewhere. I do not think Lepére was a great etcher 
—but he was very interesting and could say and do what he wanted, and that is very much, in his own 
way and this plate L’Jnventoire proves it, and both for architects and uplifters as well as collectors 
it is worth study for the careful rendering of the Cathedral of Amiens almost in outline, made to tell 
by the dark mass of figures full of character in the foreground. It is all built up but well built up—not 
faked and therefore worth study. 


198 


eh ete 


ORE 





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THE MATERIALS NECESSARY FOR 
AND THE METHODS OF 
MAKING AN ETCHING 





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OF THE MATERIALS NECESSARY 


FOR MAKING AN ETCHING 


CHAPTER XVI 


LIST of materials, utensils, and appliances for Etching may be found use- 
ful, and is here given. All these could be obtained before the war, some now 
never can be got. Also today many of the materials, including copper are 
nothing like so good as formerly. 


Copper, Zinc, Aluminium, Steel or Iron plates. 

Good copper can be obtained from photo- 
engravers. 

Celluoid, Holophone Films. 
Needles and Points 

If the artist desires to have needles made, he 
should go to a surgical instrument maker, 
but he must show a sample or specimen to 
be followed. Even then most makers are 
very careless and their work is poor. The 
best by far are made by the French. 

Dry Points, Diamond Points, Roulettes, Mezzo- 
tint Tools, Burnishers, Scrapers. 
Etching Ground. 

The best ground made to-day, the best time, 
temperature, and acid-resisting ground, is 
that of F. Weber & Co., Philadelphia, Pa., 
United States. 

Liquid Etching Ground. 

Roberson’s, 99 Long Acre, London. 

Weber, Philadelphia. 

Etching Varnish used in Germany. 
lacquer. 
Stopping out Varnish. 

All prepared stopping out varnishes I know of 
are unsatisfactory. 

Acids, nitric or nitrous, or Dutch Mordant. 
Perchloride of Iron. 
Hydrochloric Acid. 
Purchase in glass-stoppered bottles. The acids 
should be guaranteed to be chemically pure. 
A supply of bottles with glass stoppers. 
Turpentine. 
Beware of cheap trash. 
American most reliable. 
Alcohol. 
Spirits of Wine or Methylated Spirit. 
Denatured alcohol is good and cheap. 
Kerosene. 
Polish—“Globe,”” or other polishes to clean 
plates; to be used with caution. 
Liable to be bad and corrode the plates, or 
anything they touch. German Globe was 
far the best. 
Whiting, in block, not powder. 
Muriatic acid for cleaning plates. 


Made of 


These may be obtained from any plate maker or 
dealer in artists’ materials. 


Roberson & Co., London. 
Dealer in Artists’ Materials. 


Dealer in Printers’ or Artists’ Materials. 


Ditto. 


Ditto. 


Ditto. 


To be obtained of Druggists or Chemists. 


Eimer and Amend, 23d St. & 3d Avenue, New 
York are most excellent and reliable for chem- 
icals. 

Ditto. 

Ditto. 


Ditto. 
Ditto. 


Ditto. 
Must be obtained from Makers or Grocers. 


Chemists or Colour Makers. 
Ditto. - 


203 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Two-hand Vises with wooden handles. 

Scrapers, and Burnishers. Burins, Mezzotint 
Tools. 

Baths of Porcelain or rubber. 

Wax Tapers—a bundle. 

Two Etching Rollers for grounding and re-ground- 
ing plates. 

A Roller for inking plates. 

There are two sorts: the composition or rubber 
roller used mainly by wood engravers for 
proving. And the new flannel-covered ink 
roller which is far better than the dabber. 

Charcoal, for cleaning and rubbing down plates. 

Flowers of Sulphur for tints. 

Emery and Sand Papers and Tissues of various 
textures for making grounds,—and tints. 

Aquatint Materials. 

Feathers, small, for removing acid bubbles. 

A Glass Funnel for acid. 

Whetstone for sharpening points. 

A copper Plate Press, and complete outfit for 
printing. 

The small presses made and sold by various 
firms, though excellently made, and very 
portable, are of no use for large plates for 
two reasons: 

1st, they are not large enough; and 2d, they 
are not powerful enough. And therefore one 
cannot either print a decent sized plate on 
them or pull a proof which shows real 
strength or true state of lines. See below. 

The press to get is a mangle-geared or double- 
geared machine: the former has been de- 
signed for printing etchings. 

These geared presses work more easily and 
smoothly than the old star presses, even 
those with an inverted wheel and gearing, 
and despite their greater cost should be 
purchased, and the larger the better. 

Nothing less than a fifteen-inch roller should 
be bought. 

Second-hand presses, perfectly good, can fre- 
quently be picked up at a lower figure, and 
when in good order are frequently to be pre- 
ferred to new ones. 

The Model Specialty Co. has at last made a 
really good small-geared press worked with 
a handle which has been tested for a year 
in my class and proved most satisfactory. 

Anvil, Hammer. 

Calipers for correcting, finding imperfections in 
plates. 


Hardware Dealer. 

Sellers & Co. or Printers’ Materials 
or Artists’ Materials Dealers. 

Photo Materials Dealers or Artists’ Colourmen, 

Dealers in Lamps, etc. 

F. Weber & Co., Philadelphia, Pa., United States. 

L’Amour, Rue de la Harpe, Paris. 

Etching Materials Dealer. Made in New York. 


Makers 


Printers’ Materials Dealers. 
Chemists. 
Hardware Stores. 


Printers’ Materials. 

Chicken Yard or Pigeon House. 

Chemical Materials Maker. 

Hardware Dealer. 

Messrs. John Haddon & Sons, Salisbury Square, 
London; or Messrs. Kraus, Leipzig; Lee 
Sturges, Chicago; or W. Kimber, Tankerton 
Street Works, Cromer St., London, W. C. 


Model Specialty Co., 401 E. 19th St., New York. 


Printers’ Materials. 
Ditto. 


204 


OF THE MATERIALS NECESSARY FOR MAKING AN 


The materials necessary for printing are the fol- 
lowing, none of which are supplied with the 
press, though wrenches for adjusting it are 
included usually. 

Zinc Bed Plate. 

Slightly smaller than the bed of the press. 
Some printers use two. 

Blankets. 

Cut slightly smaller than bed of the press. 

At least eight pieces of blanketing should be 
purchased in order to have enough for a 
change without waiting for one set of four to 
be dried or washed. 

A set of hard, tough French blankets are useful. 

Fronting. 

Four pieces cut of the same size as the 
blankets. 

Copper Plate Ink. 

The best French or Frankfort Black should 
alone be used. Get it ground and mixed 
with medium oil, and have it put in pound 
or half-pound oil colour tubes and not in tins. 
A couple of tubes of burnt umber also. If 
inks are put in tubes they will keep any 
length of time; in cans they soon become 
hard and worthless, even if kept with water 
on the top. Avoid all other colours. 

Also get some black and umber in powder. It 
may be necessary to add colour to the ink at 
times. 

Beware of most “best copper plate ink’’; it is 
often poor stuff, with brown or blue added— 
utterly worthless. 

Oil, thin, thick, and medium. 

For mixing with the ink. 

Don’t get a dabber. 

Marble Muller. 

For mixing ink. 

Large and Small Palette Knives. 
and cleaning. 

Ink Slab. 

On which the ink is spread and taken up from 
by the roller. 

Ten Yards coarse brown Canvas. 

Ten Yards coarse white Canvas. 

Ten Yards soft white Muslin or Taffeta Silk. 

Cheese cloth. 

For wiping plates. Have the various qualities 

cut into uniform half-yard or square sections. 

Heater. Electric heater is far the best. 

Sterno Stove and cans of canned heat. 

To heat plates, be careful with it. 


For mixing 


ETCHING 


Printers’ Materials. 


Ditto. 


Ditto. 


Ditto. 


Haddon & Sons, London. 

Kimber, London. 

Weber & Co., Philadelphia. Weber’s have 
lately made the best ink I have been able 
to get in America, the only ink worth any- 
thing made here that I know. 


Printers’ Materials. 


Ditto. 
Ditto. 


Ditto. 


Kimber, London. 
Macy’s, New York. 


Kimber, London. 


Edison Electric Co. 
Druggist. 


205 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Jigger. Printers’ Materials. 
To wipe them on. 
Oil Can. Ditto. 


To lubricate press. 
A Screen of tissue paper or oiled silk or muslin, Carpenter. 
placed on a stretcher the size of the lower 
part of the window, over the work-table. 
Printing Papers. Wherever they can be found. 
Blotting and Backing Papers. Stationers. 


These are all the tools and materials that are necessary for the making of an etching. 

I usually ground my plates in the studio, if going from home to work, and see that 
they are right, and carry them wrapped in Canton flannel; and take with me ground, 
liquid ground, and the wooden-handled vice and needles. Everything else can be 
bought at any chemist’s anywhere. If plates have to be re-grounded, the grounding can 
be done with an alcohol lamp or on a stove, or with sterno. One can also get acid and 
turpentine anywhere. 


206 


OF COPPER PLATES AND OTHER PLATES CHAPTER XVII 


HERE are many kinds of copper plates made from many kinds of copper. 

The English plates, which may or may not be of English copper, are 

hammered and polished by hand. They are, in their usual form, thicker and 

heavier than any other plates. The edges are bevelled and the corners 
rounded or cut at an angle. They are beautiful to look at and abominable to work on. 
They are frequently found, when one commences to draw upon them, to be full of 
variations in the density of the metal, full of invisible spots and streaks harder or softer 
than the general composition of the plate; consequently the needle digs into the soft 
places, and slides over the hard, in a most unpleasant fashion. And when they are 
bitten this unevenness of the metal produces unevenness in the bitten lines. Even if 
etchers, as some are said to, hammer and polish their plates, these variations (unless 
the plates were drawn and scratched all over) could not be detected, and if this were 
done the plates would have to be hammered and polished all over again. The etcher 
in these matters must depend on the maker unless he owns a copper mine, and smelting 
works. In fact, some bad etchers might make good coppersmiths. For it is at the 
works that the unevenness in composition occurs, other metals, or other kinds of metal, 
or alloys, being added. Then the hammering and hardening and polishing of the 
plates by hand is always uneven, and adds to their unreliability. The polishing by 
hand is a slow process, with sand and water, emery, and finally charcoal, and it is 
also costly. As a result the English plates are the most expensive—and the most 
unreliable. 

American plates are rolled, like sheet steel, from the beginning to the end, and 
polished by machinery. They are far more even; they are far lighter; they are far 
more reliable; and they are far cheaper; there are no bevelled edges on which one 
cannot work, which have to be carefully wiped in printing; there are no rounded corners 
—but the corners of American plates are too sharp, and unless they are filed and polished, 
are liable to tear the paper; in fact, the edges should be felt all round, as, frequently, 
the plates being cut by a machine, are rough and will cut the paper in printing. I have 
now used American plates for years and found them most reliable. They can be ob- 
tained at any artists’ or printers’ materials dealers, and they can be cut to any size 
and polished—in a few hours; the British plates take days to make ready, for they 
never are ready of the size one wants. 

American plates cannot be ground down and used repeatedly, as they are too thin, 
in the usual gauge, though they may be obtained of any thickness or gauge, and then, 
if thick, be ground down for a new surface; * but they may as well be scrapped as old 
copper, for as a new plate costs just about as much as repolishing an old one, there is 


* After the etching made on them has been printed; lately, however, some of the American makers 
of copper plates have been adding brass or some other metal or alloy with disastrous results, in most 
uneven biting and tarnishing after. American zinc plates are now frequently badly polished having 
lines over them which leave a tone of scratches. It is best to get copper plates—sheets of pure copper 
from a photo engraver—and have them cut to the size wanted by him. 


207 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


scarce any economy in having them ground down. Grinding down is grinding and 
polishing and scraping the bitten lines out of the copper; that is, grinding the face of 
the plate down to the bottom of the lines and so getting a new clean face to work on. 
I have tried French, German, and Italian plates: they all seem to possess all the im- 
perfections of the English ones. 

Steel and iron may be used; also marble and lithographic stone; only, save steel 
to a certain extent, no etchers do use these metals or stones. 

Zinc is the only other metal much employed; there are two reasons: the first 
because it is cheap, and the second because it is light. 

Aluminium also has been tried. If it could be bitten with certainty, or used for 
dry point, it would supersede copper, as both the colour and lightness are altogether 
in its favour. 

The Germans, who make very large plates, use galvanized zinc; it has a coppered 
surface, works well, cutting easily, and is very cheap. It is specially employed for dry 
point. I lately saw—but was, owing to the war, unable to get—similar light plates— 
with a copper deposit on tin. These were as light as a sheet of paper. I believe they are 
no longer made. 

The question of colour of the metal is of small moment; the etcher soon gets ac- 
customed to seeing his lines which are to print black in glittering metal, though if he 
could see them in black, as he can on zinc, he would be surer of what he is about than 
when he is working on copper; but the great advantage of zinc, and especially alumin- 
ium, is lightness, therefore portability. ‘The etcher who is an artist makes his etching 
directly on the copper or zinc; the duffer, or manufacturer, or swindler, traces it or 
photographs it. The artist working out of doors can carry half a dozen zinc, or a dozen 
aluminium plates almost as easily as one copper, and the cost of zinc is almost in the 
same ratio. I do not know the cost of aluminium as compared with copper. 

Messrs. Roberson make a sort of celluloid (Holophone) plate which is of extreme 
lightness, for dry point. I have had little experience with it. For some reason these 
plates have not, I think, been much used by artists. Only small editions can be— 
I understand—printed from them, they wear quickly. 

Steel is used largely for commercial work, but most artists find it, in colour and 
substance, most unsympathetic, as are steel-faced copper plates.* 

Iron I know nothing about, or whether anyone since Diirer has used it. 

Lithographers use stone extensively, as described in the Volume on Lithography. 

* Steel facing must be done by depositing a thin steel surface of steel on a copper plate, if a large 


edition is to be printed—to protect the etched work—or an electrotype of the original plate can be 
made. ‘The steel facing may be as easily removed as deposited by dissolving it in a bath. 


208 


OF ETCHING GROUNDS CHAPTER XVIII 


HERE are many makes of etching ground, a varnish which is applied to the 

face of the plate to prevent the acid from biting it, and through which lines 

may be drawn or scratched, and where the surface is laid bare the acid acts. 

(See Of Grounding Plates.) I have tried English, F rench, German, and 
home-made grounds, and discarded them all for a ground made by F. Weber & Co., 
1125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. I have no detailed knowledge of the composition 
of the various grounds save my own, and that was too bad to give; but generally they 
are composed of wax, pitch, resin, asphaltum, or some such materials, melted and mixed 
in certain proportions—materials which when mixed and applied to the face of the plate 
can be easily drawn through yet will resist acid. Grounds are far better made by manu- 
facturers, more uniform than any artist can make them. 

What is wanted in an etching ground, a covering, protecting varnish, is: 

First, that it may be easily, thinly, and uniformly applied to the face of the plate. 

Second, that it will adhere firmly to the plate. 

Third, that it may be drawn or scratched through to the surface of the plate with 
a point, with perfect freedom, in any direction, without cracking up, or peeling off. 

Fourth, that it will absorb smoke. 

Fifth, that it will last for any time and be so tough and adhere so strongly that the 
plate may be carried without risk of rubbing the ground off, either before or after it 
is drawn upon. 

Sixth, and the most important, that it will resist acid. 

The grounds in general use are made up into solid black balls. But there are 
white grounds, so made as to show the lines dark in the white coating of wax. I have 
never tried a white ground but once, and found it like candle grease to work on, a poor 
protection against the acid; it ploughed up before or under the needle, and the sole ad- 
vantage of seeing the lines dark is of no importance; the etcher soon accustoms himself 
to their glitter on the black surface. 

There are also liquid grounds which I have never used, that may be poured on the 
plate, and then by tilting it, spread all over it in the fashion that photographers prepare 
wet plates with collodion, but they are most useful for stopping out. 

Soft grounds are ordinary varnish grounds to which grease or tallow has been 
added in certain proportions by melting them together. 

Aquatint grounds are made nowadays in several ways. Either a box with a 
fan inside it is used; in this box powdered resin is placed. If the box is violently shaken 
or the fan worked, the interior will be filled with flying particles of resin, after which 
if a door in the side of the box is opened, and a slightly warmed copper plate placed 
in it, and the resin dust allowed to settle on the surface of the plate, to which it will 
adhere in tiny grains, when it is cool it may be drawn upon and bitten, as will be 
explained. 

Or resin in solution in alcohol may be poured on the face of the plate and allowed 
to dry by slightly heating it. The resin in drying will crack into tiny particles which 


209 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


will protect the copper, where the dried resin lies, and this surface may be drawn on 
and bitten, the acid biting the spaces between the particles of resin.* 

A German method used in the Leipzig Academy to ground plates for line work, is 
to dissolve lacquer—‘“‘lacque.”” I was promised the recipe for this, but alas! never 
got it. We got the War instead. Pour the lacquer—it was quite liquid—on the plate, 
and let the superfluous ground run off at one corner; then place the plate so covered 
over a spirit lamp or on a very hot heater; the ground dried evenly, quickly, and very 
hard and black, and needed no smoking. I was given a bottle of it, but it had to be 
left behind in Germany on the outbreak of the war. Later I left everything in England. 


* A somewhat similar method is used by photo engravers. But a far better method invented by 
H. D. Welsh is to take powdered resin, put it in a thin, fine meshed piece of silk, fold the silk into a 
ball. The resin will fall to the bottom, like a pouncing bag; dab this on the plate, either evenly or more 
in places which are to be lights and less where there are to be darks. The resin will come through the 
meshes of the silk, the plate should then be heated and when it is cool the resin will be found adhering 
to it. Or the bag of resin may be hit with a stick or pencil holding it in the air and not touching the 
plate, which should then be heated. 

Or another fashion is to dissolve the resin or asphaltum in alcohol; dip a toothbrush in the mixture 
and spatter it on the plate by rubbing a pencil or stick over the hairs of the brush. 

In most aquatints the outline or main masses of the subject are usually first etched in line on the 
copper. To get pure whites it is best to draw their forms on the bare copper before the resin is put on 
the plate—this is the most sure method. One of my pupils, Mr. Fagg, invented an excellent fashion 
of doing this. He drew his whites solidly on the ungrounded plate with Higgins’ waterproof ink, and 
some of the lighter tones with a half dry brush which left open spaces in them; he then dusted the 
aquatint on, and heated the plate—when it was bitten and the ground removed the high lights were 
perfectly sharp to the smallest dots—while the lighter tones had the greatest possible variety in them. 
This is the best method I know of, for obtaining clear, sharp, white lights by aquatint. I have, however, 
not been successful with it. Instead, I drew with lithographic chalk on the bare copper all the lights, 
and then put on the aquatint, and bit; this worked excellently. 


210 


OF GROUNDING AND PRINTING ROLLERS CHAPTER XIX 


HE American etching roller for grounding plates is unknown, or at any rate 
unemployed, in Europe, but a few etchers use the rubber or composition 
roller, which wood engravers use to prove their blocks. 

This latter is a roller, six inches more or less, of composition with an 
axle attached at the ends to a handle. The American roller is made of solid rubber 
much thicker and shorter; it runs on bearings, is adjustable, and has a couple of prongs 
projecting from it to prevent the hot ground on it touching anything; on these prongs 
it rests; the handle is well made; the whole extremely well designed. It is made by 
Weber of Philadelphia. I have shown it to British etchers who have gazed at it list- 
lessly and turned to their dabbers—“ An ingeneous ienstroomint”’ was one comment. 

The American printing roller is made of flannel with projecting handles at each 
end; these, unlike the litho roller, run on bearings, as a free wheel. When the flannel 
becomes hard with ink, a layer can be cut off and a new soft face obtained. These 
are really the most ingenious instruments I know of, and naturally are unknown in 
Europe. 

The dabber is a round pad of flannel built up on a cardboard and horse-hair basis 
tied together at the top into a handle; this is dabbed in the printing ink and takes that 
up, and then the face of the plate is pounded with it. The dabber destroys quickly 
all delicate work—it has been in use for ages, because until the present, no printer has 
had the brains to invent a better tool. The roller is infinitely better and easier to work. 


2iI1 


OF ETCHING NEEDLES CHAPTER XX 


TCHING needles are made of all forms, shapes, and sizes, from the heavy 
bar of steel to the delicate diamond point, from the finest single needle to the 
multiple comb arrangement. 

Each artist must choose for himself the point or needle he likes. Haden 
is said, though he said many things, and many things have been said of him, to have used 
aheavysteel bar. Others haveused rat-tail files ground to a point ; others wooden pencils 
witha needle within. Iwas shown as a perfect instrument, which I once only tried, a sew- 
ing needle stuck in a penholder wound round with thread, and as the winding was being 
done, the thread was covered with melted sealing wax. One could hold it well enough, 
but it was impossible, owing to the bulged mass of thread and wax, to see the drawing. 
Whistler used small, beautifully balanced, double ended points needles with a twisted 
corkscrew middle to grip them, which were made for him carefully by a Paris surgical 
instrument maker. It is impossible to get such tools anywhere outside Paris.* The mak- 
ers either have not the brains or the patience tomake them. The heavier, clumsier copies 
they do make, however, suit me, and they can be bought at any colour makers or dealers 
in etching materials, but though nothing like them, they are known as Whistler needles. 

The question of needles, however, is a personal matter, and what the artist should 
use is a sharp-pointed tool which suits him with which to scratch the plate. The point 
must not be too sharp, or it will dig into the copper and stick fast or jump; or if too 
dull, it will not remove the ground. It must be just right; it must be carefully sharp- 
ened; and to get it and keep it right requires much experience. It is sharpened on a 
whetstone with oil. 

There are also multiple needles—three or four sewing needles fastened side by side 
in a metal holder, very flexible. ‘They are much used, I believe, by reproductive etchers, 
as with them brush marks can be copied and other tricks performed. 

Some artists draw through the etching ground with diamond points, but they are 
mostly used for dry point. Dry point needles are much heavier than ordinary etching 
needles as they must dig into the metal; any heavy pointed instrument will do; a very 
good one was invented by William Strang, which will make in three directions a deep, 
firm, clear cut.t The trouble I have found with dry point is to get this strong, clear-cut, 
deep line. However, it is all a matter of skill, and that comes by practice—but the 
intelligent practice and perseverance of a lifetime. 

Some of the text-books say, but I have never known it done, that, to save biting, 
different sized points—wide, narrow, and blunt—can be used; but to use small needles 
for fine lines and large ones for big is not to etch but to make things that look like, and 
are like, reproductions of pen drawings. The darks must be deep as well as broad, and 
the acid alone does this. One needle of the sort the etcher likes is all that he wants, 
though he will probably lose that and should therefore have a number. These may 
be carried in a leather instrument case. Italian leather cigar cases are excellent. 

The sharpening of needles and scrapers is an art,—the tools merely a small whetstone 
and oil. 


* Good points can be made from dental tools. 
{ Safety razor blades may be used. They make deep lasting lines. Another of my pupils Mr. 
Ziegler’s discoveries, they are set in a handle. 
212 


OF SCRAPERS, BURNISHERS, ROULETTES CHAPTER XXI 


CRAPERS—triangular cutting knives—are used to cut down the surface of 

the plate when lines are too deep, or to remove burr, and to make mezzotints, 

these last, flat knives, burnishers, oval-shaped knives, are rubbed over the 

surface to remove scratches, whether in the copper, or made by the scraper, 
and to take out lights. Roulettes of various sizes and shapes, small wheels in handles, 
are employed to get tones or tints with, by rolling them heavily over the surface of the 
copper, into which the sharp points of their little wheels or points dig holes. Sand 
and emery papers and rough cloth can also be used as well as mezzotint tools to roughen 
the surface of the plate, and so produce a tint. There are also pear-shaped mezzotint 
revolving tools set in handles, others are flat like a roller, which are very useful for mak- 
ing tints. Also flowers of sulphur may be painted on the plate with olive oil, which will 
stain the copper and print asa tint. In fact, anything that roughens, scratches, or digs 
holes in the polished plate, or stains it, will print—one difficulty is to prevent scratches 
and stains appearing where they are not wanted in the prints. 


213 


OF ACIDS CHAPTER XXII 


ITRIC acid is mostly used to bite copper plates. There is only one thing 

against it: as soon as it begins to act on the copper it begins to spread below 

the surface, instead of biting straight down into the metal. It begins to bite 

out in an inverted A-shaped manner for some chemical reason which I do not 
know—I only know it is a fact, and anyone who wants to find out the reason can ask a 
chemist. 

Hence, if a number of fine lines are placed close together, the etcher may find 
before he has finished biting his plate, that parts of the design have been undermined 
by the acid, and caved in, and will not print. Otherwise nitric acid is excellent; but 
care must be taken to obtain it chemically pure. It should be purchased from a reliable 
chemist, or any sort of diluted trash may be foisted on you. As it is a poison, a medical 
certificate in many countries is necessary to buy it. The great trouble is to get it pure. 

Nitrous acid bites straight down into the copper and the lines do not widen out 
below. The only thing I have against it is that it makes a line too clean and sharp; 
it is not accidental enough; a final wash of nitric, however, will correct this, or should. 
It is useless to make positive statements about biting etchings. The man who can do 
just what he wants in etching is not an etcher, but a duffer or manufacturer—no etcher 
ever really knows what he is doing till he pulls a proof from his plate, and then he has 
the time of his life. Most people who manufacture etchings by yards or dozens don’t 
know anything about etching. A map or visiting card etcher or photo-engraver can bite 
perfectly ; an artist is in a funk every time the acid touches his plate. 

Some photo-engravers bite a dozen plates at once. Some turn them face down in. 
the bath to prevent sediment gathering in the lines. Some painters throw them in a 
bath and go play golf or take a nap. The etcher nearly goes mad with excitement, 
worry, fumes, and burns. 

There are any number of other acids with which copper, zinc, and other metals may 
be bitten—hydrochloric, Dutch Mordant, perchloride of iron, etc., but either these bite 
very slowly, or else they discolour the plate so that the lines in a short time cannot be 
seen, or do not give off fumes or bubbles, or make deposits in the lines, it is impossible 
to see if they are biting, and all the lines become black and dead, and there is no visible 
action. I know that these mordants are used and are reliable. It is said that Rem- 
brandt used the Dutch Mordant. But most modern etchers do not, though they may 
have a bottle of it about. 

Nitrous acid does not tarnish the lines; as it bites, it gives off bubbles, and as soon 
as you see them you know the biting has begun. It is visible, vital, and human in its 
action, and an etching which does not possess these qualities is of no artistic value, though 
for the moment valued at hundreds of pounds by connoisseurs and collectors. 

Because Rembrandt got wonderful results with abominable materials, like Dutch 
Mordant if he used it, is no reason to imitate his difficulties—which is easy—but it is very 
difficult to improve on his successes. 


214 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Always insist on getting and using chemically pure nitric acid known as C. P. The com- 
mercial stuff is worthless. 

I have lately tried as a mordant perchloride of iron. It may be used pure, but if so 
though it bites rapidly, it is so dark that you cannot see the lines when poured on the 
plate and it also like Dutch Mordant turns them black. But if a few drops of it are added 
to a nitric acid bath it seems to make the acid “take hold” of the copper quicker and 
make it bite more straightly down into the metal. 

I have also tried the Dutch Mordant again, as prepared by Mr. Emest Haskell— I 
do not know the formula but bought it mixed by Eimer Amend. It bites much quicker 
than any I have tried, does not discolour the lines, bites straight down, as nitrous and 
perchloride of iron do, but I do not think it gives much life to the line, it is too sure and 
calm. It gives off a green grey sediment which can be brushed off, the nitric fumes and 
bubbles are much more lively—and dangerous—but I have found a happy medium as 
with the perchloride of iron—I mix a few drops of nitric acid with it, and get good results. 
Mr. Haskell tells me the Dutch Mordant does not deteriorate with time—It is used pure 
—undiluted. 

I also find that in cold weather slightly heating the plate after it is put in the acid 
bath will often start biting. 


215 


OF PRESSES CHAPTER XXIII 


HE person who does not print his own plates or cannot is not an etcher, but 

a shop-keeper and manufacturer, a lazy, incompetent loafer. 

The bigger the press one can set up the better, because the pressure is more 

uniform, and while it is impossible to print a large plate on a small press, a 
small one will work better on a large press. The toy presses invented by Hamerton to 
carry about and screw on a table are worthless, though some of them are excellently made. 
They do not give the real state of a plate, the real strength of the lines, if one wants 
to see them. Consequently when used, owing to want of power, the artist may re-etch 
his plate, when it is quite right, and ruin it. Proofs and prints should always be made on 
the same press and by the same person—the etcher who made the drawing and bit it. 

The old-fashioned star press is now being superseded by the geared press, and not 
only is this much easier to work, but the pressure is far more uniform, and the results 
are far better; there was a delight in hanging on the old star wheel, but there is a cer- 
tainty about the fly wheel which compensates for it. ~ 

The copper plate press consists of two metal cylinders placed in an iron frame one 
above the other, the lower much larger in diameter, and therefore heavier; both have 
axles running through them and resting on the sides of the frame; one end of the axle 
of the upper cylinder is prolonged so that either a geared wheel or handles of a star shape 
are attached to it, directly or geared up. Between the cylinders is a flat metal bed or 
“plank”; the upper cylinder is adjustable and is screwed down on to the top of the 
plank, the bottom of which touches the lower cylinder; and these screws give the pres- 
sure, cards placed under them add elasticity. If the wheel or handle is now turned, 
the plank will, under great pressure, pass between the two cylinders, which by turning 
the wheel also revolve and carry the plank through exactly like a wringer or mangle, and 
squeeze the ink on the etched plate (placed on the top of the plank) out of the lines on to 
the paper, or rather the paper into the lines, and make the print. 

The plank is now made of steel, but it was formerly of wood, hence its name. 
This is the whole principle of the action of the copper plate press. 

The best American Press is made by Mr. Lee Sturges of Chicago; it is really a copy 
of Sir Frank Short’s English press, and though not too carefully finished, it stands endless 
wear as I have proved, after two years’ work in my classes. One special feature of Mr. 
Sturges’ press is a small press at the bottom of the frame for drying paper and pressing 
proofs; beside which it steadies the press and keeps the weight at the bottom. 

A very good small geared press is made in New York by the Model Specialty Co. 
This I have tried myself and so have other etchers and my pupils with excellent results 
at the Art Students’ League where one has been in use for a year. Mr. Gorr also, the 
manager of the Company, arranges for repairs to presses and does excellent work in this 
way. 


216 


OF INK CHAPTER XXIV 


ITH ink the print is made and without the very best ink only a very poor 

print can be made—nor can a good print be pulled without the best. 

The best inks are lamp—encre de bougie—and Frankfort black—they 

are all made from the soot of lamps—or fires. The ink may be had in 
powder or mixed with oil. Ifa reliable ink maker can be found—and there are such— 
who will make a pure solid black—and make it always of the same colour and con- 
sistency—use that ink. The ink maker prepares and grinds quantities at a time, 
and it should therefore be of the same colour and consistency. The printer will then 
know what he is using. The average “best black” is trash—weak mixed with blues 
or reds or greens—or any filth—not pure black or pure burnt umber, the only colours to 
use. This may cost $1.00 a pound—good ink costs $4.00—yet ink makers prefer to sell 
the cheaper. The painter can depend on the colour maker to always give him the same 
quality of colours—but the etcher cannot always depend on the ink maker—or what 
the maker gives him. 

The professional printer buys his ink in powder and mixes it himself—with oil— 
rubs it down with a muller on his ink slab and with all his experience never gets the same 
colour and consistency twice running in his mixture—twice in a day unless he mixes 
enough. 

The ink maker usually supplies the prepared ink in cans—tins. On opening them the 
ink may be right—but after they have been opened once and a little taken out, that 
remaining must be covered with water—and then the ink at once changes—either 
the water does not completely cover it, or penetrates it ; in either case it is spoiled, gets 
hard, or gets water in it. 

There is only one way to be sure of your ink: when you have got a sample that is 
right have a quantity put in strong oil colour tubes with large mouths—you will know what 
you have got—and can use it safely—and it will last for a year or more—but even then 
the ink makers will put it in weak thin tubes with small mouths and when the tubes 
are squeezed they burst or the ink comes out the wrong end. This is the way of ink 
makers—but it is a fact. 

To make ink, to burn it, grind it, mix it, is an art, so is colour making, but as I say 
no painter grinds and mixes his colours—no printer does either. The painter trusts 
his colour maker—the etcher reviles his ink maker ; one process is as simple as the other, 
but the printing ink maker involves the etcher in endless difficulties and despairs. The 
method, however, of having the best ink made in large quantities—mixed and ground 
uniformly and kept in air-tight tubes—is the only sure and practical one for etcher 
printers. Only use pure burnt umber, this is the only brown which mixes well with 
black without turning it green—the only brown which is not hot or sooty. Oil colours 
may be used, but they have not enough strength or body to be satisfactory. The etcher 
must have the best tools and then know how to use them. That is the only way. 


217 


OF PAPER CHAPTER XXV 


APER is as important as any other factor in the making of etchings. The 

only paper on which etchings can be really properly printed must be one hun- 

dred years old. Doubtless a little of the paper being made to-day is good— 

or will be good for printing in a hundred years. But the paper which has 
lasted for a hundred years is good, though not all of it. The tone of time, if the paper 
itself is good, is everything. The best old papers are Dutch, Italian, French. English 
paper is scarce ever good, German I know nothing about, and though there were Ameri- 
can mills, I never have found any of their products, that is, only a few sheets, some of 
which were good. ‘The etchings in this book are, as may be seen, printed on the same 
paper as the letter press, and well printed; but this machine-made paper has none of 
the beauty of the hand-made. 

The qualities necessary for good printing paper are—that it can be easily and 
uniformly damped ; that it is not brittle, or it will tear or crack; that it should take the 
ink and retain it on the surface without spreading or sinking in; and last, but most 
important, that its colour is good. 

Some papers, excellent for mezzotints and aquatints, are of no use for etchings or 
engravings. The softer and more absorbent papers are more suitable for the former, 
the less absorbent better for the latter. 

Some artists like Japanese and India papers; others, including myself, dislike 
them; though occasionally beautiful old Japanese paper may be found, most of the 
modern so-called Japanese is machine- or bad hand-made trash; the mere fact that a 
thing is hand-made is no guarantee of excellence, rather it may be a proof of hide-bound 
stupidity. 

All good printing paper is hand-made, from cotton and linen rags, which are cut 
up and ground and then boiled and stirred to a pulp. The pulp is cleaned and not 
bleached, though in most old hand-made papers, there are foreign substances. Some 
colouring matter, at times, is added, as there are rose, blue, and greenish papers, and 
some of a beautiful ivory tone, though this is mostly due to age. The old paper was 
more or less sized—the less for printing on the better—but damping or soaking will 
remove the size. At times, however, there is so much size in it that if left damp long, 
the sheets may stick together or adhere to the plate, when being printed on. 

The size was put in to make the paper repel water and ink. The pulp was run or 
ladled into a mould, the bottom of which was covered with wire gauze or threads. 
The water ran out through the gauze and the pulp was caught and retained on it, in a 
thin layer; in the wire gauze were designed figures of fools’ caps, unicorns, crosses, 
grapes, mountains, which impressed themselves into the pulp, making it thinner in those 
parts as it dried and became a sheet of paper. ‘These marks gave the name to the size 
of the paper, the different marks being used for the different sizes of paper,—Foolscap, 
Raisin, Gesu, etc.,—and later national and city arms were added in royal or municipal 
paper. Thus one may find Papal Foolscap, Venetian or Tuscan Gesu; or the Stemma — 
of monasteries, where there were illuminators or scribes, appeared, and finally the marks 


218 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


of the paper makers themselves. Sometimes these water marks are as beautiful as the 
paper. They however became more and more elaborate and aggressive; in many 
modern makes, the paper is rendered worthless for printing on as they stand out and 
completely ruin any design, by appearing in white when prints are made on it. These 
water marks are not only useful to identify the make of paper, but they give the time— 
approximately—and place where it was made, and though there are some sixteen thou- 
sand of them known, they can with a little knowledge be classified by countries and 
periods. Some papers, especially English, bear the date—Whatman’s always—some 
of the older papers also; and though it is easy to detect frauds in prints by the date, 
it is almost equally easy by the maker’s marks. Still, some modern firms now use old 
water marks—a disgraceful proceeding. 

Tones are sometimes added by etchers to papers by placing them in trays or baths 
filled with liquid tea, coffee, snuff, tobacco, or other colouring matter, and leaving them 
for some time to soak and absorb the colour; but they seldom do this uniformly and 
it frequently rots the paper and generally makes it smell badly. Such tricks are most 
unreliable. Sometimes the colour comes off in printing, leaving spots, or the paper so 
treated may crack. 

The hunt for old paper is as fascinating as for any other prey, and all etchers who 
are artists get all the paper they can find. The greater number, however, being mere 
hack manufacturers, neither care nor know anything about the subject, especially the 
fact that, if the artist knows how to print, the better the paper the better will be the 
proof. 

In the Leipzig 1914 Book and Graphic Arts Exhibition there was an old German 
paper mill and printing shop in operation, a water mill, and on this paper was being 
made by hand. 

The rags and papers were ground up in huge revolving tubs; the pulp was conveyed 
to another tub, into which one workman dipped a ribbed, water-marked, fine-meshed 
sieve or tray, let the superfluous pulp and water drain out and handed the tray, with 
a flat layer of pulp on it, to another man who turned the layer of pulp out on to a piece 
of flannel or cloth; then he covered the pulp with another piece of cloth, and continued 
to do this, making a pile of pulp, cloth, sandwiches. Afterwards, the pile was placed 
under pressure, but I did not see this, and the water squeezed out, and the sheets hung 
up to dry, and the paper was ready for sizing and use. But the paper that I saw made 
was coarse and rough, and not very good. 

Vellum, silk, satin, and other abominations have been employed for catching col- 
lectors, but no artist would use such stuff. 

Gone forever are the mills along the little streams of north Italy, and the little 
streams of Philadelphia. Gone is the old paper of France and Germany and Belgium, 
gone for war work—gone to end a war that need never have cursed the world (Jan. 1, 


IQIQ). 


219 


OF GROUNDING PLATES CHAPTER XXVI 


N all etching manuals one is told how Rembrandt grounded his plates, Bosse tells 

how they were bitten; no doubt he used the best and simplest methods known 

at the time, though no one to-day knows certainly what they were. But we have 

at our command better and simpler ones; the only trouble about grounding plates 
now is that there is no trouble—the work is too well and too easily done by those who 
know how; but the average etcher, the average teacher of etching, knows nothing of 
the present-day tools and methods. Even when using these new tools, however, unless 
care and precautions are taken, failures, partial or complete, will be the result. And 
sometimes with all possible attention to details failures happen, and this risk of failure 
is one of the charms of the art to real etchers. 

The present, the best, and the surest method of grounding a copper plate is as 
follows : 

Take the plate and clean the face of it with turpentine, being careful to dry it 
thoroughly with a soft rag—the least drop of turpentine on it will spoil the ground. 
Rub it with whiting in powder on a clean rag, till it shines like a mirror. Clean the 
whiting off with another—best a silk rag. In Germany a strong acid bath was used; 
the plate was dropped in this, by wires, for a moment, and came out glittering. (I do 
not know what the acid was—I probably never will know.) 

Take a vise with a wooden handle; put a small piece of cardboard between the 
jaws, bending it over the face and the back of the plate; and place a corner of the 
plate between the folded piece of cardboard. Screw up the vise tight; the paper is 
used to prevent the teeth of the vise from scratching the plate. It is better to prepare 
two plates, if one proposes to etch them at the same time. Never have too few plates 
or tools; remember the advice of the Florentine merchant to his son: “Never stint 
thyself in thy work or with thy tools”’; one had better spend on them and save on the 
results. Put the plates with the vises attached to them (have two vises) on the Heater 
(which will be described in the Printing Chapter), turn on the gas, full head, and let 
them get so hot—tt is the etching way—that if you spit on one corner of the plate, the 
saliva will dance about on it; when this happens the plate is hot enough. But there is 
another way: take the ball of etching ground—there is no necessity to tie it up in a 
silk bag, but be careful it does not scratch the plate—and rub it all round the edges 
of the plate; as soon as the plate is hot enough the ground will melt and leave a border 
of ground all round it, the rest of the plate remaining clean. 

Then take the etching roller (the only good ones are made by Weber & Co., of 
Chestnut Street, Philadelphia), and with it, by rolling from edge to edge of the plate, 
using the melted ground, at the edges, as a supply, one can lay in a few seconds a per- 
fectly flat, even, thin, translucent ground; the longer one rolls the thinner the ground 
becomes; the ground leaves the plate and adheres to the roller; if that becomes over- 
charged, roll the excess of ground off on the second plate standing on the heater. There 
is only one thing to rrmember—not to let the plate get too hot, or the ground will either 
be boiled or burnt. In the first case, bubbles will appear in the ground, and the biting 


220 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


will be foul, that is, full of holes, though sometimes these produce, when in the right 
place, interesting tones or tints, but foul ground, which causes foul biting, is usually a 
nuisance. In the second case, if the ground is burnt, it will turn dull or smell strongly 
of the varnish, it will not adhere to the plate, will crack and peel off under the needle, 
and the acid will attack the burnt surface, destroying the design drawn on it. 

In either case, remove at once the plate from the Heater, to the Jigger (see Print- 
ing Chapter), slide it over, and turn down the gas in the Heater. Continue rolling, 
and as the plate cools, the burnt spots or bubbles will disappear, as the fresh ground 
from the roller is rolled over them. If the holes or burnt spots still show, put some 
more ground round the edges of the plate and roll again; if too cold, and the ground 
will not melt, slide the plate back again on to the Heater, turn up the gas, and heat it 
again. When the ground seems on all over the plate evenly, hold the plate towards 
the light at various angles, on a level with your eye, to see that no portion has not been 
covered with the ground; if there are ungrounded spaces, they will glitter and must 
be covered with the roller. If the ground still looks burnt, let the plate cool; if very 
hot the ground can be rubbed off with a rag; or wash off the ground with turpentine 
when cold, clean it with whiting, and begin again. Lay the hot grounded plate again 
on the Heater; never use gas rings or spirit lamps, if you can help it, as advised by 
authorities; they either do not heat the plate uniformly or too much.! If the heat from 
the Heater is too great, lower the gas. When heated, as the plate heats one can see the 
ground change colour,—become brilliant. When it is completely changed, which will 
be in a few seconds, lift it off with the vise; take four wax tapers, twist them together, 
light them at the flame of the Heater, hold the plate high in air, grounded side down, 
over the lighted tapers by the vise still attached to the plate, so that the flame just 
touches the ground on the surface of the plate, and pass the tapers back and forth rapidly 
over the entire plate several times; but on no account must they touch the ground, 
or they will rub it off and spoil it; if the smoking has been properly done, the plate will 
be found to be of a uniform brilliant black all over, which becomes like dull ebony when 
cool. 

If the plate cools before the smoking is finished, put it on the Heater again for a 
short time, till it is again hot. The same change in colour as it heats will be noticed ; 
as it heats, it will become shining. 

There is no necessity to make the plate entirely black with the smoke, and there 
is some danger of burning it; a brown tone of smoke will enable the artist to see his 
glittering lines in the copper, when he draws, and that is all he wants. If it is proposed 
to bite the plate in a bath, it is best, while it is hot, to cover the back, either with liquid 
etching ground or stopping out varnish, poured on and allowed to run about, or put on 
with a brush; when the plate has cooled the varnish will have adhered strongly. When 


applying the varnish rest the plate on a ledge, being careful the hot grounded face does 

1 There is a lamp made in America, a tin box containing alcohol and tallow mixed, with a stand 
on which the plate can be placed, which is good; it is called a Rock Alcohol or hand fuel lamp, also 
Sterno Stove and the fuel is called Canned Heat. The Sterno Stove must be used with great care, as 
if upset the fluid runs about blazing and is difficult to extinguish. But far the best and cleanest, safest 
is the Electric Heater; get a large one with three degrees of heat. 


221 


OF GROUNDING PLATES 


not touch anything. Then stand the plate on edge with its grounded face to the wall 
and leave it for at least twenty-four hours; for no matter how well the ground is put on, 
if the plate is not properly allowed to cool and the ground to harden, if packed up be- 
fore the ground really hardens, or drawn on, it will crack or rub off. But if left alone 
for a day it may be carried anywhere and in any climate, and remain good for any 
length of time,—qualities possessed by no other method of grounding and no other 
etching ground that I know but Weber’s. Still, many good and conservative etchers 
will not practise this method, and most know nothing about the system, and don’t 
want to; and dab, hammer, and mess about, as they have been told, and would 
never dare to think or act for themselves, simply because Rembrandt and their teachers 
knew nothing about it. 

As to carrying plates when grounded, wrap them in Canton flannel with the fluffy 
side next the plate. I have carried them fourteen thousand miles this way in my 
trunks and bit them after six months without any trouble from the ground. They 
can be carried in grooved wooden photographic cases, but this is a much more clumsy 
method ; wrapping them up is best and lightest. 

If a roller is not obtainable—though there is nothing to compare with it—the 
ground from the ball may be applied in the same way, or the ball of ground placed in 
a silk bag and rubbed about all over the heated plate, when it will melt, come through 
the silk mesh, and adhere in streaks or blobs to the plate. If now a dabber, an in- 
strument made of a pad of horse-hair wound over a circular piece of cardboard and 
covered with silk, the ends of which are twisted and tied up as a handle, is used—a 
small flat form of ink dabber—and the plate dabbed all over, a more or less uniform 
surface will be obtained, but the plate nearly always gets cool in spots before it is finished, 
or gets burnt or has holes left in it. This process may have been good enough for 
Rembrandt, in his day, but if he were alive to-day he would no longer use it. When 
the dabbing—a slow process—is finished, the plate is again heated and smoked, as 
described, with tapers. 

Always use the same roller for one sort of ground, never for hard and soft, or both 
will be ruined. The roller should occasionally be cleaned with turpentine. 

Grounds may also be rolled on from one hot plate to another, as described for 
rolling off excess grounds. 

The ground may also be dissolved in oil of lavender, made into a paste, which can 
be spread on another plate, a wood-engraver’s proving roller, or the one described, 
used to roll the paste from one plate to the other, the grounded plate heated, when 
the oil of lavender will evaporate, then smoked; but why this stupid method should 
be employed it would be difficult to say, if it ever is employed. 

Another way is to dissolve the ground in chloroform, pour the solution on the 
plate, tilt it about and let the excess run off at a corner; let it dry, then heat and smoke 
the plate, if you can. 

By the German method the liquid ground—Lacquer, lacque—is poured on, and the 
excess poured off at a corner. The plate is then placed on the Heater or over a spirit 


222 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


lamp and the ground dries quickly, and is of such a dark colour that it does not need 
smoking. | 

Soft ground is made by mixing tallow half and half with the ordinary etching 
ground ; both must be melted together. More tallow should be used for cold weather, 
less for warm; and the mixture put in a flat silk bag. It can be rolled or dabbed on 
to the plate in the ordinary fashion ; for the soft ground the dabber works well. But 
special rollers or dabbers must be used for this soft ground only. The ground in the 
bag can be dabbed on fairly smoothly. It should then be smoked, but as it will always 
remain soft, it must not be touched, or allowed to touch anything. 

Aquatint grounds are made in one of two ways. Either a tight box is used with a 
fan inside, which may be made to revolve by a handle which projects outside; the 
box also has a narrow door at the bottom to admit the plate; in the box powdered 
resin is placed and the fan revolved or the box shaken; the interior becomes filled with 
the particles of resin. The door is then opened, and the plate slightly heated with the 
polished side upward slid into the box, and the powdered particles of resin soon settle 
on it. The longer it remains the more resin will settle on it, and therefore the more 
ground. The plate is removed from the box after a few minutes, and again slightly 
heated, when the powdered resin melts and adheres to the plate. 

The other method is to pour resin dissolved in spirits of wine on the plate; the 
alcohol in the spirits soon evaporates, and the resin dries in lines and ridges, which 
form the ground, and protect it from the acid bath.* 

Sand paper grounds are made by taking an ordinarily grounded, smoked plate, 
putting it on the press, and laying on the grounded face a piece of sand, emery, or glass 
paper; the plate is then run through the press three or four times, but care must be 
taken to shift the paper every time the plate is run through the press, or the ground will 
be scratched into great holes. After passing through each time, the plate should be 
carefully looked at for big holes; it will be found that the ground has been all broken 
up by the sand paper into little holes, and through these holes the acid will bite as in 
the case of aquatint. 

Grounds of various textures can be made in the same fashion by placing roughish 
canvas, silk, or any grained or ribbed material on the grounded plate and running it 
through the press; the pattern, grain, or threads will break up the ground. 

Roulettes and mezzotint tools may also be used in this way. 

* Beside Mr. Welsh’s and other methods already described, a line of powdered resin may be placed 
on the edge of the plate and then blown over it with an eye dropper and heated. When cool it will be 
found to have adhered. Other grounds may be made by graining copper plates with lithographic sand, 
and then scratching lights on them, or ordinary sand may be sprinkled on the plate and in various 
density a clean iron or steel plate placed on that and run through the press which will scratch a varied 
tone on it. The ground may be also spattered on by dissolving the resin in alcohol, dipping a tooth 


brush in it and rubbing a stick across it—and the charged brush held over the plate and then heating it. 


Asphaltum may be used in the same way. 
223 


OF DRAWING ON THE PLATE CHAPTER XXVII 


NLESS the artist is an etcher, he never will become one, and if he is an etcher 
it is impossible and unnecessary to tell him what he knows better than any 
one can teach him. Still there are theories and methods of drawing, that 
the design may bite, and print well, and these methods must and will be used 
by the etcher if he is an artist and not a grinder out of copper plates. The artist makes 
his design straight away on the copper,—the fact that it will print reversed does not 
trouble him, if he is an etcher. The more spontaneous and vital the lines, the better 
selected, the fewer these are, if they are good, the more quality the etching will possess. 
There is one authority who talks solemnly of the etcher ‘“‘opening up the line.” If the 
authority’s head were opened up it would be found full of misunderstanding. 

In a complicated design it is better to mark a few points and spaces on the plate, 
with the needle. It is not well, as some do, to paint the design on the smoked copper 
with Chinese white; do not trace it with greasy red chalk; as it is difficult to get these 
things off without spoiling the ground, and some grounds, in the acid bath, are affected 
by them, and chemical action occurs, the design drawn or traced, being bitten into the 
plate, though only slightly, but very unpleasantly. If working from nature out of doors, 
the best thing is that the artist should train himself to work straight away with the 
etching needle on his grounded plate. Doing so will make him careful in placing his sub- 
ject on the plate, and thoughtful in the selection of his lines. Until lately it was very 
difficult after covering a line or passage which was unsatisfactory, with stopping out 
varnish, to draw again upon it; either the stopping out varnish was so thick the needle 
ploughed it up, or it dried so slowly that it was a long time before one could work on it ; 
or it destroyed the ground. Anyway, the artist lost time and temper, and frequently 
spoiled the plate. One of Rembrandt’s or Bosse’s or somebody’s maxims was, “One 
hour with the needle, two days with the stopping out varnish.” But what they meant 
by this was the removal of unnecessary lines. 

Now, however, all these difficulties are over. If the artist wishes to make changes 
or corrections, all he has to do is to paint over the place with Roberson’s Liquid Etching 
Ground with a brush dipped in it. The finest lines may be covered, and the largest 
spaces filled with the varnish, which unites perfectly with the ground on the plate. This 
liquid etching ground is now used by those who know it, instead of stopping out varnish, 
and it does not spread, and dries at once. Weber’s liquid ground is good. 

The design made directly on the plate will of course print in reverse, but the amateur 
who is worried by that should confine himself to photographs,—no artist bothers about 
it. Mechanical hacks reverse the subject in a mirror, or work from sketches, and so 
give themselves away. E 

If one is working from a design or sketch in the studio, the most satisfactory method 
is to make a drawing in compressed Russian charcoal—there is democracy but no char- 
coal now in Russia—this is much better than pencil or chalk—on paper. Lay the sketch 
on the grounded plate, face down, run it through the press under slight pressure, when, 
on lifting the paper, it will be found that every line and tone of the charcoal drawing 


224 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


has been transferred to the plate and shows distinctly, and these lines may then be gone 
over with points, or other tools. The design can be seen until the lines are completely 
bitten in. And this method is far to be preferred to the messy transferring with smeary 
red chalk or other sticky materials, practised because of their respectable age, and be- 
cause their users know no better. The subject is also reversed.” 

In making the design on the plate, however, the artist must remember that this 
design is but a means toward the print, and though it must be a work of art in itself, it 
will never be seen by the public, or the collector, not even by the etcher—when printed. 

The etcher must also remember that the lines must be so arranged and spaced as to 
allow bits of copper to remain between each when bitten, for if these do not remain, and 
the lines all run together (and in the biting the lines spread at times under the ground, 
if nitric acid is used or they are too close together) the spaces between the lines will be 
bitten away, and the surface will all be lowered, and instead of printing black as the 
subject looks on the plate, a dirty grey will be the result, as the flat bitten surface, 
though lower than the surface of the plate, will not hold ink, at least, not as much as the 
artist wished. ‘Therefore he must think of every line and remember that the deeper 
it is to be bitten the further it must be from that alongside it. 

Again the etcher must remember that though he may make the finest line imaginable 
with his point, he can also, by biting, turn it into the broadest, deepest, therefore strong- 
est. So he must all the while think of what all the lines are going to look like when bitten 
in and printed from. For to be printed from is their purpose. Therefore fine printed 
lines can be drawn closely together; heavy, deep-printed ones must remain far apart, 
the wider and deeper the lines are to be bitten the further they must be placed apart to 
leave the necessary space between each, and this is one of the most important matters 
to remember in drawing on copper. 

Some etchers use for different sized lines, different shaped and sized points, which 
at times enable them to get the broader lines more quickly, as more of the ground is 
removed, and the acid should attack the copper sooner; but such plates have little 
quality, and the work looks like a pen drawing. It is the amount of ink held by each 
line which gives quality, strength, depth, richness, to an etching; therefore the blackest 
lines must be deepest as well as broadest to hold the ink—which gives the color. 

Most artists only use one point, which must be very carefully sharpened on a whet- 
stone, not too sharp or it will dig into the copper; not too blunt or it will leave a film of 
ground, and the acid cannot penetrate this, even though the lines are visible. When, 
however, the etcher only uses one point, and when he commences to draw on copper, 
he will be somewhat perplexed by finding as he goes on working that his drawing is in 
light on dark, that his design is perfectly flat,—that there is no relief, no perspective in 
it; these things he must get in the biting ; therefore it is absolutely necessary that every 
line is put down, not with a view to making a drawing on the plate, but to making lines 
which will print properly on paper after they have been bitten into the copper plate. 

Another matter is that the lines show in glittering gold, not in black as they will 
print. And most deceptive is the fact that the glittering lines drawn in the black 


* Nore: I now make lithographic drawings from nature on paper and transfer them to the plate 


by running them through the press. ey 


OF DRAWING ON THE PLATE 


grounded plate seem far more numerous, and far closer together, than they really are, 
and after the plate has been bitten, the bitten design is usually beautiful—black in gold 
when the ground is removed, the black lines caused by shadows. Yet when the plate 
is bitten and the ground taken off, and a print pulled, frequently the result is thin and 
poor, and more lines have to be added, but it is luckily far more easy to add work to an 
etching, than to remove it. 

But unless one can make a line which will bite and print—not an imitation of a pen 
line—one is not an etcher; few are, or ever will be, but many think they are, and more 
people think so too. 


226 





Pe lad 6 


LONDON OUT OF MY WINDOW 
a 


SOFT GROUND. LONDON OUT OF MY WINDOW. JOSEPH 
PENNELL 


In making this plate I grounded it with the soft etching ground which is made by mixing tallow with 
ordinary ground, and this mixture was put up in a silk bag, then dabbed on the heated plate, and the 
ground laid with the roller in the usual way, and then slightly smoking it. The ground never hardens 
because of the grease or tallow mixed with it. I took a piece of canvas grained drawing paper, 
made by Roberson of London, folded it tightly over the plate—and round the edges at the back. It 
might be stretched like paper for water color—but I never did this. I then made the drawing with 
a hard No. 5 stick of Russian Compressed Charcoal (that is gone with many other things that made 
life worth living—probably the secret is lost too), and carried the drawing on the paper out com- 
pletely. There are only two things to remember in making the drawing: you cannot touch—you 
must not touch—the face of the plate with anything but the charcoal, or it will leavea mark. Every 
line made on the face of the drawing paper—which must not be too thick—cuts right through the 
soft ground on the plate and when the drawing is finished and the paper lifted off, the ground adheres 
to the back of it, and the drawing is seen in glittering lines on the plate.* It is well during drawing 
to lift up a corner of the paper and see if the work is on the plate.f 

The design on the plate is then bitten in the usual way—you can stop out but scarce make any 
additions as the effect of roulette or dry point lines is quite different and they swear at the others. 
Tones and tints of ink may be left on the plate or it may be printed cleanly like a visiting card when it 
will look exactly like the charcoal drawing—or should—only sometimes it doesn’t. 


* While the soft ground removed from the plate will be found adhering to the back of the paper. 
+ That is if the lines the artist is making on the paper show in the grounded plate when he lifts 
the paper. 


228 








OF BITING IN CHAPTER XXVIII 


O matter what acid is used for biting a plate, the acid mixture must be pre- 

pared at least a day before. If nitric or nitrous is employed, two large glass 

stoppered bottles should be obtained that will each hold a quart at least. 

Fill one of them with acid. Acid is sold by the pound! or kilo. Care must 
be taken to obtain it from a reliable dealer, and that it is what is known as chemically 
pure. Measure one half the quantity from the bottle of acid into the empty one and 
pour on it, through a glass funnel, an equal quantity of water. Some people say the 
water should be put in first; I don’t believe it makes any difference. Leave the bottle 
containing the mixture unstoppered ; little action save a slight change of colour, a slight 
blue-green tone, will be seen to take place, both being colourless; but there is violent 
action; much heat is generated, and there are strong fumes given off which, if confined 
in the bottle, may burst it or blow out the stopper. And the heat is so great that if the 
mixture is at once poured on the plate it will melt the ground. It must therefore be 
left for some hours before using—a day or night is best. 

A photographer’s bath of porcelain is most useful, either as a bath or a sink into 
which the acid may drain.* The plate being now drawn on and the back having been 
covered with ground previously, place it on the corner of the bath, balancing it and get- 
ting it level by placing needles or sticks under it. When balanced on the edge of the 
bath the plate can be instantly tipped up and the acid poured off, as is often necessary, 
into the bath; it is much more difficult and takes longer to pick up the plate out of the 
bath and pour off the acid, so long that the design may be ruined. Another way is to 
put an upturned saucer in the bath and lay the plate on that. 

Having got the plate level, pour out in the bottom of the bath some of the now cool, 
diluted acid and water; take a small chicken feather, dip it in the mixture in the bath 
and paint with it the lines it is first wished to bite, the lines which are to be darkest and 
deepest. It is the general belief that acid must be poured in quantities on the lines; 
as a matter of fact, after the acid has got to work, a drop will bite as strongly as a puddle. 
Frequently, however, it is some time before the acid begins, or appears to begin to bite. 

In a few minutes bubbles should commence to rise from the lines of drawing if 
nitric or nitrous acid is used. {These prove that the plate is biting. With Dutch Mor- 
dant and other similar mixtures, the rate of biting can only be told by drawing a point 
over the lines, when they can be felt, as soon as the biting commences, as there are no 
bubbles, no evidence of biting save that the lines turn black. It will be noted that the 
acid sometimes does not begin to act for some time; or there are no bubbles; but it may 
be biting all the while, and the plate should be taken up and washed and dried with 
blotting-paper, and looked at to see how, or if, it is really biting. When dried between 
blotters, hold it up level with the eye toward the light, the lines will be seen,—rather, 
if biting, the design will be visible. It will also be found that the biting commenced 
soonest where the lines are closest together, and sometimes a passage of this sort must 
be stopped out before other parts of the plate with few lines have begun to bite. As 

* The rubber baths called trays are lighter and do not break so easily. 


231 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


soon, then, as the bubbles appear, with the feather gently brush them away; otherwise 
they will remain on the lines and prevent the acid from working in them. If after some 
time there is no action, put the plate on the Heater, light the gas, and the heat will 
usually start it; be careful, however, that it does not get too hot and melt the ground. 
Continue with more acid on the feather to paint on the design, commencing with the 
foreground, painting it first; then, still leaving the acid on the foreground, paint the 
middle distance; then, leaving it still on those parts, paint in the extreme distance. 
If, for example, the foreground is allowed fifteen minutes before the acid is applied to 
the middle distance, that might require ten minutes, the foreground now will have been 
biting for twenty-five; if the extreme distance is now given five, the foreground will 
have been bitten half an hour, the middle distance fifteen minutes and the distance five, 
and the desired relief and perspective should be obtained. Some etchers make a record 
of biting, an etched guide on the plate, but as all plates bite differently, this is not of much 
value. The entire foreground should not be covered, but the acid continually painted 
about. This will give variety to the work, a variety obtainable in no other way. The 
work too will not have to be stopped out—unless it seems to be over-biting. Stopping 
out is stopping the biting when a part seems to have been bitten enough, and is done by 
removing the plate from the bath, washing it in water front and back, and carefully 
drying it between sheets of blotting paper; then taking on a camel’s hair brush some of 
Roberson’s liquid etching ground,—not the vile, sticky, slow drying stuff mostly sold as 
stopping out varnish,—and painting out the passages where it is desired to stop the bit- 
ing; the finest lines in making corrections can be stopped out as the liquid ground dries 
almost immediately, does not run about, and can then be drawn over if necessary. By 
using this liquid ground, all the terrors and tediousness of stopping out are destroyed, 
and the rule I have quoted—‘‘one day with point, two days stopping out”’—abolished. 
But by this method of biting there frequently is no need to stop out; the acid may be 
brushed off the lines with the feather and the biting so stopped or taken up with a blotter. 
It is by no means so simple, however, as it seems, and the method is most uncertain. 
The needle should frequently be drawn across the.lines to feel if they are biting; the 
other way to be sure they are is to take the plate out of the bath, wash dry, and look at 
it as described. If it is biting, the lines will cast shadows and show the design, but 
this is deceptive as the ground on the surface makes them look deeper than they are. 

If one is not sure what is happening and cannot tell, remove the ground by paint- 
ing a small spot with turpentine and lifting the dissolved ground with a blotter; if the 
lines are biting they will appear black in the shining spot of copper. Then clean the spot 
with water, and paint it over with liquid ground, and it may be drawn on almost at 
once, or the lines, which can be seen in the re-covered spot, opened again by going over 
them with a needle removing the varnish on top of them. 

No great etcher, however, has ever mastered the art of biting; a photo etcher, a 
visiting-card etcher, an etching manufacturer, can bite one to a dozen plates at the same 
time perfectly. No artist ever, except by luck, though this is backed by science and expe- 
rience and art, gets exactly what he wants; he usually gets a shock, when he sees a proof. 


g22 





a ; Vy 


PAUL'S OVER WATERLOO 


BITTEN LINE. SAINT PAUL’S OVER WATERLOO, THE TURN OF 
THE TIDE. JOSEPH PENNELL 


When the Thames tide turned the barges came up or down on it—drifting, or sailing when there was a 
breeze—never more will I watch them from my wondrous room—gone, all gone, through this worth- 
less, useless war. There it was I got endless subjects by day and by night. 

The plate was grasped and held in a wooden-handled vise, heated on the printing heater—till it was hot 
enough to melt the ball of etching ground which I never cover with anything, but just rub it round the 
edges of the plate, till it forms a border about an inch wide of melted ground, then I roll this border 
by rolling the roller from top to bottom and side to side till I get a flat, uniform ground all over the 
plate. Then heating the plate again, which is beginning to cool, I smoke it by passing under it, held 
high in air and face downward, four long wax tapers lighted, passing them back and forth near the 
plate but not touching it; the smoke sticks to the hot ground and when cool will not rub off. The 
plate should be left at least a day to cool. 

The drawing, after carefully considering the space and position it should occupy on the plate, was made 
straight on the copper, and completed, but it requires—just a little—thought and care and trouble 
and pains. When finished it was bitten by putting it in a photographic tray, painting the design 
with acid. I used mtrous in the darkest barges, put on the plate with a small soft chicken feather 
and then dragging the acid about over the lighter bridge and then over the city and finally the dome 
of St. Paul’s. 

That is the way biting is done, but the doing is another matter—when the plate seems bitten 
enough I wash the ground off with turpentine, and I polish it with Globe Polish—gone with 
Germany—and when polished the lines show dark in the glittering metal. 

I then wash it with turpentine and the plate is ready to print. 


234 








a 


rm, 





OF BITING IN 


The acid never in a studio bites in the same fashion on two days, or even half a day, 
though the acid comes from the same mixture in the same bottle. Sometimes it will 
commence, as I have said, furiously to bite immediately ; then souse the plate with water 
at once; at other times in half an hour; then place it on the Heater; or on another part 
of the plate the acid won’t bite at all. The causes are mainly changes in temperature 
and composition of copper or strength of acid. In summer generally, or in warm coun- 
tries, plates may be bitten better and quicker than in dampness or winter. The proper 
temperature seems to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, but even with this uniform the 
atmospheric conditions dominate everything. 

But in drawing on copper one may work in any sort of weather—pouring rain— 
though the hot sun on a plate will soften the ground. 

As the acid is used, it turns green and becomes dirty, and at last it will not bite; 
throw it away, but not down the sink, or you may have to pay for new drain pipes. 
A method, an excellent—but not a very nice one is to spit on the plate, pour the acid 
on the saliva, and paint with a feather the mixture, the acid and saliva unite, and will 
not run off the plate and bite extremely well.* 

The usual method of biting, and a far simpler and easier one, when the back of 
the plate is grounded, is to place the plate on the bottom of the bath, pour acid all over 
it, till it is completely covered, leave it a few seconds or minutes, take it out, wash it 
and dry it, and paint out the lightest parts with liquid etching ground; then immerse 
it again till the middle distance is bitten, say ten minutes longer, and stop that out, 
leaving the foreground to continue biting only maybe half an hour more. And finally, 
both by this method and the previous one, a few drops of pure acid, one at a time, 
may be dropped on the lines or parts which are to be the strongest bitten. A mug 
and some clean water must be at hand and poured immediately on the spot where the 
pure acid is, or ground and lines too will go. In fact, a supply of water at hand, for 
instant use, is absolutely necessary. 

Another, the negative method, and this can with ease alone be employed in the 
studio, or by bringing the plate back to the studio, is to commence by drawing in the 
darks of the design, put the plate in the bath and bite them for some time; then draw the 
next lighter parts, put the plate in again, the darks biting still; and finally draw the 
lightest, or most distant parts; the whole should now be bitten. The advantages of 
this method, which requires very careful forethought and arrangement of the design, 
are that there is no stopping out and that lighter lines can be drawn over darker ones 
with perfect ease, and there is great variety to be obtained in the bitten lines in this way. 
The disadvantages are that it is not easy to carry acids and bath about, and that breath- 
ing acid fumes as one draws over the bath is most disagreeable. 

Haden and Hamerton say they have worked from nature in this way in the bath; 
it is doubtful if anyone else ever attempted it, more than once anyway, as half an hour’s 
breathing acid fumes while drawing with the head over the bath will demonstrate, on 
the throat of anyone foolish enough to try it, as it is most inconvenient and unpleasant ; 

* NoTE: See page 253. 


237 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


and to work out of doors, the artist would have to carry a battery of utensils with him, 
and most probably could not see what he was doing. I tried it once and upset the bath 
on my legs. I ruined my trousers and bit a hole in my foot. 

If the plate is biting in the bath of acid and has to be removed, either finger covers 
of rubber may be used, or what is better, an old needle, to raise the plate out of the bath. 
The artist, however, will probably grab the plate, burn his fingers, destroy his nails, and 
ruin his clothes; but if the plate is a success he won’t mind. 

When the plate is thought to be bitten enough, take it out of the bath, wash it and 
pour turpentine over a bit of it, rub the ground off and look at the lines; if they seem 
sufficiently bitten, pour the turpentine over it all; this will dissolve the ground, and 
that can be all rubbed off with a soft silk rag. If it does not all come off wash it 
with alcohol—and as a last resort melt it off. Then put on the plate some metal 
polish—Globe Polish made in Germany is the best, the English sort is no good—and 
polish the surface thoroughly.* The polish and dissolved ground will remain in the lines 
and if the plate is now wiped as in printing, the artist can see the actual state of the 
lines almost as they will print. Then, wash all the polish and varnish out of the lines 
carefully with turpentine, otherwise the mess will harden and prevent the ink from 
getting to the bottom of the lines, and then the prints will be weak. If this happens the 
dirt must be boiled out of the lines. Always wash the plates after working on, or print- 
ing from, with turpentine or kerosene. Some printers clean the turpentine off with saw- 
dust in which they dip the plate, but soft rags are just as good. If the plate is tar- 
nished clean it with salt and vinegar mixed. 

In biting zinc plates, either much more water must be added to the acid (one part 
acid to ten of water), or the acid must be allowed only to remain on the plate for a tenth 
of the length of time. Otherwise the acid will tear the design to pieces, eating the zinc 
up, too, turning everything black. If Dutch mordant is used the etcher can only 
tell that the plate is biting by drawing with the point across the lines—the mordant 
bites slowly, stodgily and well corroding the work. It is a method for slow, stodgy 
people. Mr. Thomas, of the A. H. Thomas Company, has suggested to me another 
fashion of biting: that a large quantity of acid be mixed in a test tube and when the 
mixture bites rightly that the specific gravity be found, and the mixture always kept 
of the same strength—but unfortunately the temperature is always changing and the 
copper always is different and I am afraid this method would not work—as with almost 
every plate, and often when biting the same plate the strength of the acid must be 
varied—biting can not be standardized—if it could there would be more etchers, though 
not more good ones. 


* Note: There are endless other metal polishes, be careful as they may contain corrosive acids, or 
substances difficult to get out of bitten lines. Plates may be slowly cleaned with salt and vinegar or 
ammonia, or rubbed with emery powder and water. If very much corroded or tarnished they may be 
rubbed with a bit of rag dipped in muriatic acid, which will remove all stains instantly, but may lower 
the surface of the plate. There was the mysterious acid I saw used in Germany which may have 
been muriatic; the plate was lowered in it by wires and on removing it in a minute it was clean and 
shining. 


238 


OF BITING IN 


Difficulty is frequently found when the acid is painted on the plate to prevent it running about; 
if the portion to be etched is painted with a feather dipped in gum arabic and water, gum water used 
by lithographers, and the acid dropped on this solution, it will not run. The primitive way is to spit on 
the plate, and paint the saliva where it is wanted with a brush, and pour the acid over it, this also pre- 
vents it from running. 

When holding up the plate to the light to see if it is biting remember the drawn lines and bitten 
ones in the ground and copper cast shadows and they are not so deep as they appear. If lines are not 
deep enough, the plate must be rebitten; heat the underbitten plate, melt some ground on a heated 
clean plate, put both side by side on the heater, roll the ground from the clean plate on to the bitten 
one; it should cover the face of the plate, leaving the bitten lines exposed; when cool they may again 
be bitten and stopped out, as in ordinary biting but it is a difficult process. There are special grounds 
and rollers made for regrounding. The surest way of all is to get a photo engraver to lay a rebiting 
ground; they do it perfectly, as they have tools for the purpose. Another method of the photo engravers 
is to burn the ground on the plate.—This last is the way grounds are laid in Germany. 


239 


OF CORRECTIONS IN BITING CHAPTER XXIX 


OMETIMES, in fact frequently, the artist is not sure how his plate is biting. 

If he will hold it up horizontally on a level with his eye, or a little below it, 

against the light, he will see the bitten lines in it as shadows, but this method 

is deceptive, as the ground through which the lines have been drawn also casts 
a shadow into the bitten lines and may therefore give the effect that the line is twice 
as deep as it is. Another fashion of testing the biting—or whether biting is taking 
place, especially if Dutch mordant is used, which not only bites slowly and throws off 
no bubbles but turns all the lines black—is to draw across them with a needle, and if 
they are bitten the needle will jump from line to line; or they may be scratched with 
the thumb nail, and so felt if there is any biting going on. The surest way, however, 
is to take some turpentine on a brush and wash off a small piece of the ground, when 
the lines may be seen, but as the dissolved ground fills them, they may even then look 
stronger than they are. To restore the spot of ground destroyed, paint it over with 
liquid ground and go over the lines which may be seen dark in it, opening them up with 
a needle. But the best way of all is to go ahead trusting a great deal to experience 
and a little to luck. Mechanical manufacturers of etchings never make mistakes, or 
take the ground off completely and pull a proof and then re-ground it again. Artists 
never do such things if they can help it. 


240 


OF RE-GROUNDING CHAPTER XXX 


F the plate, when a proof, or proofs rather, are pulled, seems weak, it can easily be 
re-grounded with the roller,—in fact, the roller was first used for this purpose,— 
in one of several ways. 

Take a clean plate, and either solid or liquid ground. If liquid ground, put 
it on by the first manner, described in the Grounding Chapter; * heat the plate to be re- 
grounded; by the second manner, leave it cold. Pass the roller in either case over 
a heated clean plate with ground on it—the bigger the roller the better—and when the 
roller is evenly charged with ground, pass it once evenly and rapidly over the under- 
bitten plate; the ground should leave the roller and adhere to the surface of the clean 
plate, and the lines already bitten should not be covered but show bright in the varnish. 
Do not smoke the plate, as the lines would then disappear ; the finest lines will probably 
be covered with a film of varnish, but either they can be gone over with a point if they 
want strengthening, though the acid will most likely bite through the ground just laid 
in those parts where there are lines. Bite in the ordinary way—in fact the trouble is 
to keep the acid from biting unevenly ; if it commences to work where it is not wanted 
those parts must be stopped out. 

Other plates, though not underbitten, may not have enough work in them, but 
when grounded with the roller in this fashion, they may be drawn on with a point, but 
two things will very likely happen: the point will jump about unpleasantly over the 
already bitten lines, and these bitten lines themselves will soon begin to bite again, 
and are thus liable to ruin the design; it is much better and pleasanter to finish the 
plate with dry point or do another one. A photo-engraver can re-ground the plate. 

As to taking out passages, if large, they must be hammered up from the back, by 
putting the plate on an anvil and finding the spot with calipers, and then hitting it up 
with a hammer from the back. When the spot to be lightened or removed is ham- 
mered up, the plate must be scraped and burnished and polished with charcoal. 

If small, it can be scraped and burnished without hammering up. 

It is better to have this (the hammering) done by a professional, or not do it at 
all unless the hole or bump is very bad; but if it is done by the etcher, a pair of calipers 
must be taken, and the exact spot, front and back, on the plate, found and marked ; 
the plate then laid on an anvil, and with a blunt piece of steel, a steel punch, or a spe- 
cially made hammer, the sunken or raised spot, either front or back, hammered up or 
down and then polished with scraper and then the burnisher, and then rubbed with 
charcoal dipped in oil. It is very delicate, nasty work. The moral is—see that the 
back of the plate (the most frequent cause of bumps) is clean. The least speck of dirt 
or ink on the back will cause pimples on the face, all of which will print as grey spots— 
and they always come in the places where they show most. 

Etchers’ charcoal is supplied in large sticks—and with much patience and muscle 
a brilliant surface—and a little lowering of the lines—may be had. 

The finest emery paper will do the same—or make a tint too—if the etcher is not 
careful. Corrections in etching are an abomination ; it is easier to start a new plate. 

7 See 253. | 

241 


OF DRY POINT CHAPTER XXXI 


RY point is drawing on the ungrounded plate with the point, though by 

this method, instead of letting the point play lightly over the grounded sur- 

face, the etcher must dig into the copper with the point; and not only this: 

the amount of colour he will get in printing depends on the angle at which 
he holds the point, which will either have to be heavier than an ordinary etching needle, 
generally, a steel bar,—or a diamond point set in a handle. A tool invented by 
Mr. Strang is useful for dry point, line work, and engraving.* 

To see the work, the plate may either be smoked—but that makes a dirty mess 
as the lampblack is not fixed and smears everything—or, as the artist works, he can 
rub paint, ink, or copper polish in his lines and so see their effect. The whole theory 
and practice of dry point is that the more vertically one holds the point on the plate and 
the more lightly it is used, the finer will be the line produced; the less metal will be 
thrown up beside the line; and the more it is inclined from the perpendicular, and the 
more strongly it is dug into the metal, the broader and stronger will be the line, the 
bigger the ridge of metal that will be ploughed out and brought up like a furrow on one 
side—this is what holds the ink, and is called burr. 

In the first instance the plate is only scratched; in the second it is not only dug 
into, but ploughed up, and a ridge or furrow of metal thrown up on one side of the line. 
It is this burr more than the digging which holds the colour and gives the richness to a 
dry point. In metal engraving the line made by the burin is sharp and clean; there 
is no burr; that is cut off by the tool. The burr, if it holds too much colour in dry point, 
can be cut off with the scraper. 

Till the new roller for printing was invented, but a very few proofs could be obtained, 
as not only was the burr removed in printing, but the dabber smashed it in inking. I 
have seen the burr come off both on the dabber and the paper with the first proof, and 
a bit of burr on the dabber or a rag will scratch a plate terribly. 

When the design is all scratched on the plate, wash off with turpentine the paint, 
grease, or whatever else has been rubbed in the lines to see them, and print it in the 
ordinary fashion. Only do not try to clean it too much or with the hand; otherwise 
the burr will go too. 

Formerly half a dozen proofs were about the limit a dry point would yield without 
degenerating, or being re-worked. Now with the roller one can get probably a hun- 
dred. I note this has been recently done, but how it was done I do not know; anyway, 
all the preciousness of dry point—if that was of any value—is gone. Its financial value 
is still maintained, however. 

Draw away with the point, cross-hatching or digging in; do not be afraid; if too 
black, the scraper will lighten the spot by removing the burr, or if too light, another 
set of lines will darken it. There is nothing to be afraid of as in biting. Often, too, 
designs in dry point have the burr scraped off and the lines alone are left to print like 
an engraving. But plates done in this way usually have a thin, raw, played out look. 

* Safety razor blades are good. 

242 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


When dry point is added to bitten work, however, the burr usually does have to 
be scraped off, or it will print too black. Do not do so, however, till the plate is being 
inked; after inking, then, if the lines are too black, that is, if there is too much colour, 
remove it by going carefully over the dry point lines with a scraper, and then with the 
finger rub some more ink on the spot. 

Dry point work is quite unlike engraving. ‘The dry point is held and used like a 
pencil, and gives its own beautiful quality. The burin or graver is held in the palm 
of the hand, and pushed away from the artist, dug into the copper; it is not intended to 
throw up burr—that is cut clean off, or should be—and the lines are sharp and clear. 
But metal engraving, which requires great skill of hand, is not to be considered here. 
Dry point is almost always added to bitten plates, in very delicate passages, or to 
strengthen and repair lines that are broken or weak. The dry point can be drawn over 
the bitten lines and, if too strong, the burr removed. 


243 









L: THE OBELISK 





DRY POINT. LONDON FROM MY WINDOW. JOSEPH PENNELL 


The dry point is a simple heavy point made of steel and the design scratched into copper with it. 
The lighter the pressure and the more vertically the point is held over the plate the lighter and more 
delicate will be the lines made. [If it is depressed at an angle and dug into the plate a furrow of 
metal will be thrown up and this holds the ink rolled or dabbed on the plate and the film of ink thus 
retained added to that in the lines gives the bloom and richness to the dry point line. Compara- 
tively few, sometimes very few, proofs can be obtained as the burr, the ridge thrown up by the point 
breaks off and the scratched lines wear down quickly, but now with the roller many more good proofs 
can be obtained. 

This was mostly drawn straight on the copper from my studio window. This plate—and all the others 
were steel faced before printing. 

Dry point is often, in fact usually as the artist pulls his proofs, added to the plate to make it richer, or 
the scraper is employed to take down passages which are too heavy. The dry point line can be drawn 
right over the bitten one, and if too strong reduced with the scraper. Often too the burr is removed with 
a scraper when the dry point lines will harmonize and blend with the bitten ones. 


246 


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ROULETTE. ST. PAUL'S. IOSEPH PENNELL 


This plate was made with a roulette—or different-sized roulettes entirely—that is, the drawing was 
made with the little wheel with serrated edges which dug into the copper plate as it was rolled over 
it, and the scratches thus made produced the design which was then inked and printed. 

The roulette is worked exactly like a dry point—only the tools are wheels with serrated edges in- 
stead of points. 


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OF SAND PAPER AND AQUATINT CHAPTER XXXII 


HE sand paper method gives a proof very similar in feeling and appearance 
to a mezzotint, but it is made in an entirely different manner. 

The plate should be grounded and smoked in the ordinary way and allowed 
to cool. 

Take a sheet of fine sand or emery paper; cut it to a size a little larger than the 
plate; put the plate in the press, grounded side up, and the sand paper on top of it; 
cover the whole with a large sheet of backing paper and run it through the press, under 
light pressure. It must be larger than the plate or the edge of the paper will make a line 
on the plate. Then turn the sand paper about and run through again, and, always turn- 
ing, repeat this three or four times. A fresh sheet of sand paper will probably be needed 
as the grains of sand come off the paper and adhere to the plate. When the plate has a 
golden mottled appearance it means that the ground has all been broken up into little 
holes. But the right amount of breaking up, the right number of times to run the plate 
through the press, is difficult to tell; it depends on the ground and the subject. And the 
sand paper can be cut unto various shapes following the contour of the design, or the 
foreground may be run through less than the distance as it wants more protection from 
the acid. 

As it is almost impossible to make any corrections by this method, and the greatest 
certainty is required, it is well to trace, or rather place the drawing on the plate; after 
the sand paper ground has been made, by making a drawing of the size of the plate 
on a larger sheet of paper, with Russian compressed charcoal, lay it face down on the 
plate, turning the edges of the paper over the back of the plate to keep the design from 
shifting, run it through the press once, under light pressure ; the charcoal should transfer 
perfectly, and the design can be seen on the plate till it is finished. Mezzotint subjects 
can be transferred in the same fashion; the design will be reversed and print in the 
right orientation if that is any merit.* 

When the subject is transferred to the plate, if there are to be any whites in it they 
must be stopped out at once, before biting as this is altogether a method of painting. 
To get the whites, take a camel’s hair brush and charge it with liquid ground—not too 
much or it may run, and paint out the white spot, where it is wanted and seen, in the 
transfer on the plate; let the ground dry and then put the plate in the bath. Atint 
will now be bitten all over it save in the stopped out part, and there will even be a little 
there, caused by the scratching of the grains of sand. Next stop out the lightest tone, 
again bite, and continue in this way till the extreme dark is reached, and then the design 
should be painted and bitten into the plate, made into a printing surface; but it is 
not so easy as it seems, for the ground being broken before biting into holes, when the 
plate is put in the bath—I have never tried painting the acid on with a feather—the 
ground has an immediate tendency to go to pieces altogether ; and if this, or rather wher- 
ever this happens, a vile grey black hole appears—the least bit too much biting causes 
it—and if too little bitten and the ground is removed, it is very difficult to rebite; fresh 
emery or sand paper will not harmonize with the work bitten in. The best way is to cor- 

* Lead pencil and litho chalk can be used. 
253 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


rect or strengthen with roulettes or mezzotint tools. The whites, too, will have to be bur- 
nished most likely, as the dots or scratches will appear even on the unbitten parts; and 
care should be taken to thoroughly clean the plate, with a soft rag, and remove all grains 
of sand or emery, or, when it is being printed, the printing rags will take up the grains 
of sand and scratch the plate horribly. And when the ground is removed there may be 
no apparent work on the plate at all; do not be disheartened till you have inked and 
wiped and printed the plate, though invisible before, the design may be there and 
print perfectly. I have had this happen in this very print in this book—when bitten 
there was nothing to be seen on the plate. The grounding of an aquatint is described in 
the chapter on grounding a plate. The biting of an aquatint is done in exactly the 
same way, only as the dots are not pressed into the copper but deposited on it, the 
whites do not have to be burnished out—the surface is not indented. But the ground 
is much more delicate and sensitive.* | 

But the sand paper method is the more certain; the sand paper ground is stronger 
and yields more impressions, it is more deeply bitten. However, those who used aquatint 
at the beginning of the last century, seemed to have no trouble with it, but I have found 
it most difficult. JI am afraid many of their methods and manners died with those bril- 
liant technicians. . 

Silk, cloth, and other textiles can be pulled through the press in the same way 
on the grounded plate, and will break up the ground into dots or patterns which may be 
bitten just as the sand paper ground. 

It is very risky to draw the design with a point instead of transferring it, as the line 
of the drawn design will be broken by the dots, or the dots will be enlarged by the lines 
and dirty holes will be the result. The works made in this manner are printed paintings 
and should show no lines. 

The surface of the different spaces or tones is flatter, more uniform than mezzotint ; 
but this can be got over by working in gradations with roulettes or mezzotint tools, or 
burnishing and scraping—which are far better methods than re-biting. The printing 
is exactly the same as with a line etching and presents none of the difficulties and delays 
of mezzotint. 

Again, I can only say it is a very interesting but a very unreliable method. But 
so is all etching. 

Other methods that may be useful are to take a plate, draw on it with litho chalk— 
dust resin on—heat slightly and bite, when cool wash it—the chalk dissolves leaving the 
design to be bitten. Or draw your design in oil colour mixed with siccative, transfer by 
roller to the place, dust ground of resin, bite slightly, wash, when oil paint will come off. 

* Nore: If pure whites are wanted in aquatint, they should be painted out with liquid ground 
before the aquatint ground is laid—using the already etched design as a guide. This method gives the 


finest white lines and also prevents hard edges, and is probably the method of the eighteenth century 
acquatinters. But the best way of getting whites is described p. 206. 


254 


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SEARCH LIGHTS 


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SEARCH LIGHTS IGSEPH PENNELL 


The sand paper ground is in a way similar to aquatint—in execution and similar also in a way to 
mezzotint in effect. Though, really it technically more closely resembles aquatint, as the general 
tone is bitten in, is not rocked on the surface. 

The method is as follows: the plate is grounded and smoked in the ordinary fashion, allowed to cool, 
a sheet of sand or emery paper is placed face downward on it and run through the press—then taken 
up and the ground will be found filled with little holes made by the grains of sand—it should then be 
shifted to prevent the same holes growing bigger and run through again and this repeated, until there 
seem to be enough holes in the ground; the design is then drawn on the plate; all the parts wished 
white stopped out, and then the plate bitten all over; in the next biting the grays stopped and so on, till 
the final biting should produce the blacks, but it is not as simple as it sounds for the holes have a 
tendency to break up the ground and undermine it, and then the acid bites the copper into dirty 
blotches which are very unpleasant and hard to remove. But when successful the effect is most 
pleasing—and from the solidity of the biting—a large number of proofs may be made without the 
plate wearing. The plate may also be covered with a tone made by the sand blast and then scraped 
exactly like a mezzotint. But the tone being made by a machine is mechanical, and has the same 
mechanical effect as when the air brush and other tools are used in drawing or painting. 





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PENNELL: SONG OF THE SEARCH 
LIGHTS. LONDON IN WAR TIME 


AQUATINT, RESIN GROUND. SONG OF THE SEARCH LIGHTS 
LONDON IN WAR TIME. IOSEPH PENNELL 


This ground was laid with resin as described in the text and then bitten in the same fashion as the sand 
paper method. Aquatint has been wonderfully handled in the past, and apparently it was easy to 
manage, but the secret of using it successfully must be lost, as I have never found or encountered such 
a delicate, easily destroyed surface or one so difficult to bite. 

The lines at the side of the rays were drawn with a point, they were not intended to print, but they 
did and it was impossible to get rid of them, without destroying the aquatint. 


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PENNELL 


This ground was laid with resin and then bitten in the same fashion as the sand paper method. Aqua- 
tint has been wonderfully handled in the past and apparently it is easy to manage, but the secret of 
using it successfully must be lost as I have never found or encountered such a delicate, easily destroyed 
surface or one so difficult to bite. 


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OF MEZZOTINT CHAPTER XXXIII 


EZZOTINTING is the most fascinating and maddening method of making 

a print that ever was invented. There are two ways of working: in the old 

fashion, which is far the simplest, and I imagine for artists the best (at any 

rate it is for me), the design is simply etched in outline—figure subjects, I 
believe, are not etched—on the plate. There is no etching in my plates in this book. 
The artist then takes roulettes, mezzotint rockers and any similar tools, and roughens 
the surface of the plate where he wishes to obtain his darks, draws the design with them 
in tone; he gets his strong blacks by further going over the plate in many directions with 
a mezzotint rocker in his hand. If the work is too dark he lightens it with a flat scraper 
like a tiny double-edged sword blade. Formerly some sort of tool was used which made 
a series of lines; now the rocker and roulettes make dots, with dry point burr on them; 
and this burr, as in dry point, is what holds the ink and prints. If the plate is gone 
over sufficiently in a sufficient number of directions, it will print with a beautiful rich 
velvety full black. If too strong it can be reduced with a scraper ; if the plate is worked 
in this way it should produce fuller, richer, and purer colour than by any other method, 
as the tones are full, strong, rich—not scraped and brushed. 

But it is not that generally employed, but one which is quite the reverse. Usually 
the plate is entirely covered with this dry point burr obtained by going all over it some 
twenty or more times in twenty or more directions with a tool like a chisel furnished with 
a rounded serrated cutting edge, made up of a row of little teeth, a rocker, which is 
rocked back and forth over it. This is most tedious work, though if the artist does it 
he can vary his tones; but this is usually done by assistants or professionals, who use 
the tool set in a long pole, and rock that, and the grounding is quite expensive. Attempts 
have also been made to get the black ground with the sand blast, or by rolling rough 
marbles under pressure over it. I do not know if they have been very successful; I be- 
lieve not, as the burr is said not to hold. It might, however, be steel-faced. 

Once the plate is covered with the ground of dots and burr, the engraver proceeds 
after he has transferred his design to the plate. If he has etched the design in previously, 
he can vaguely see it, and by means of the scraper to draw with, bring out the design by 
removing the burr—working from dark to light in “la maniére noire’—the burr is 
cut away easily and the design appears, drawn by the scraper, glowing from the copper. 
The artist is delighted, inks the plate, pulls an impression, and gets a dirty, smudgy 
smear—only a ghost of his glittering design. He finds at once that he must use different 
ink, different wiping, and different colour, different paper; he cleans his plate; if it is 
his first mezzotint he had better take it to a professional printer and see it printed, but 
even then he will be disappointed, if not disheartened or disgusted with the result. 
The apparent richness and luminous bits of light which he has seen in trials of unfinished 
mezzotints, he will find are frequently accidents; he will find that though the design 
shows in the copper, it will not without endless labour of scraping and scraping print save 
in weak black and worn out greys; and the more he scrapes and prints, the weaker and 
greyer it gets; and then, a little slip of the scraper and there is a white patch or a black 

267 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


scratch. To get these right with roulettes or more scraping is heart-breaking, and the 
more and longer he works the more he learns that there is nothing spontaneous—vital— 
about this way of making mezzotints, that the beautiful early trials are accidents, that 
the wonderful Lucas reproductions of Constable’s sketches are the results of endless 
labour, that most mezzotints are done by professional copyists, and pantographic, 
photographic hacks—people with patience greater than that of Job, though they may not 
know how to draw. In fact, in a nutshell, this beautiful (that is, beautiful in its unfin- 
ished state) art has never been and probably never will be practised by any artist of 
eminence to any extent for original work, because—beautiful as are its results—the 
methods of producing them are so slow, complicated, so deceptive, so difficult. Other- 
wise artists would not only have mezzotinted their own pictures, but created original 
works by this method themselves. They have not; the finest mezzotints are almost 
altogether the work of professional mezzotinters, estimable and plodding copyists, but 
rarely creative artists. Mezzotint up to the present has never to any extent been used 
for original, spontaneous creative work by artists. 

There are a few who use it, and delight in it, and are successful in working at it— 
but they are very few. 


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DRAWN MEZZOTINT: ORIGINAL MANNER. THE SHOT TOWER 
AND THE BRIDGE. IOSEPH PENNELL 


I have described this method in the text and there is every reason why it should be employed. It 
is simply to draw the design with mezzotint tools on the plate making the design in the dots which the 
tools leave on the plate, going over it more and more in every direction to increase the darks 
instead of covering the whole plate with the mezzotint ground and then scraping the design out in 
light from the darks. The original method is simpler and quicker—therefore it is little used. 


270 





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MEZZOTINT : SCRAPED MANNER. WREN’S CITY 
PHOTOGRAVURE FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATE. IOSEPH PENNELL 


I did not rock, lay this ground myself—it was done by a professional mezzotinter—a patient plod- 
ding brained German, a pupil of Frank Short—killed or interned probably. The method is simply 
to fasten the copper plate toa table and then with a mezzotint rocker attached to a long pole witha 
joint which permits the whole affair to rock, go over the entire plate many times in many directions 
till it is entirely roughened up and if inked will print perfectly black. 

I then made in Russian charcoal a sketch of the subject on a thin sheet of paper and laying it face 
downward on the plate in the press passed it through and the drawing came off, was transferred to 
the copper and gave a guide to follow. I commenced on the glittery water with muscle, and a scraper, 
cutting down the dots and then drew the design with the scraper—it was good to look upon— 
rubbing ink on the plate to see what I was doing—and then I put it on the press and pulled it—think- 
ing I had done something which should rival and surpass the mezzotinters of the past, and got the 
dirtiest, scratchiest mess I ever saw. So I appealed to Frank Short and he told me that all the Lucas 
copies, all his own work was the result of slavish drudgery—and I found this out. Had it not been 
for this damnable war I would have found out how to work—I have maybe—but since the time of 
Prince Rupert mezzotint has become the means of expression of the methodic plodder. I know some- 
thing can be done with it. This plate was my first attempt—and I am not ashamed of it—of try- 
ing to render, as well as I could Wren’s realized dream, so I scraped and scraped and scraped my 
drawing, working with the scraper from dark to light, and I have done what I could. 


274 





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OF COLOUR ETCHINGS CHAPTER XXXIV 


HAVE said little or nothing about this form of publishing etchings, because it is 
merely a method of printing; though it has grown both into a uselessly elaborate 
way of getting a simple but inartistic result and it has become also a commercial 
commodity. 

The person who demands colour and the artist who supplies it in print are totally 
incapable of appreciating or understanding an etching. 

Pure good colour never can be obtained by printing from sunken lines or tones 
in a metal plate, for the simple reason that the colour is squeezed and crushed and 
squashed and completely changed. Black and brown, and in brown only burnt umber 
alone, can be used to print from. No other colours whatever are any good. Turner’s 
attempts to imitate sepia or bistre in the Liber are awful. 

Colour can only be properly applied to wood blocks and lithographs (see Lithog- 
raphy and Lithographers), which are surface blocks to which no pressure is applied 
scarcely to remove it—to print it—the colour is not in any way pressed or crushed, and 
retains its quality. 

In lithography and letter press printing in colours the same conditions prevail, 
but even here the methods of the wood block colour printers must be followed if good 
colour and not mud is wanted. 

Etchings and other intaglio plates may be printed in colour in many ways—have 
been for years—one only worse than the other. As Whistler once said, good black ink 
on good white paper was good enough for Rembrandt and good enough for him. 

The simplest, best (or least objectionable) as well as the oldest method of print- 
ing etchings in colour is for the artist to mix up his colours, that is, the colours he wishes 
to print with, using oil colours, on a palette or ink slab, and apply them to the plate with 
stumps, wiping off the surface colour with clean rags; it is a difficult operation, when 
there are a number of colours, to keep them pure, and the best results are obtained 
from the simplest plates. Some of these plates require a day or more to ink, and various 
dodges are resorted to, to keep the colours moist. Paintings have been reproduced 
in this fashion, which before being printed are quite like the original, that is, as like as 
a good copy, but when run through the press are quite unlike it. 

The colour also may be painted on, or wiped on, before or after the plate is run 
through the press. ‘The use of the single plate, however, requires a great deal of brains 
and care as well as patience, and is therefore not so much practised as the method of 
using several plates; this is simply that of misapplying the methods of the colour wood 
block printers and lithographers. 

An etched key block is usually made and several plates for the various colours are 
made in line, or aquatint, or some other tone process—often photogravure—transferred 
from plate to plate and printed one after the other, one colour from each plate. I have 
heard of as many as fifty-six printings, and the fifty-sixth, and printed result, was fifty- 
six times worse than the first print—a triumph of misdirected energy—and the frame of 
this masterpiece, if I remember aright, was also etched or painted or printed. 


277 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


Some few plates done in imitation of red chalk drawings, or drawings with a touch 
of red chalk in them, I have seen which are not bad, especially photogravures from the 
drawings of the old masters. 

As for the coloured etchings which mostly are made in France, Germany, and Aus- 
tria, they are the result of some sort of photogravure, or hack line work, in the hands of 
very clever photo-engravers, and printers, but the artist has nothing to do with making 
them, in fact he is usually not allowed to see them being made.* 

If the artist must make coloured etchings, he should make them like a Japanese 
colour print—in mosaic—that is the properly mixed colors should be arranged and 
printed side by side and not superimposed. The colors should be mixed by the artist . 
and not obtained by printing one on the other—but it is a waste of time as it is im- 
possible to get good, or the best results from copper in colour.f 

Nor shall I say anything about Photogravure, wonderful as some of its produc- 
tions are, for it is a combination of photography and mechanical engraving, though 
in the best results there is much engraving and etching by very able men. The most 
interesting work was probably done by M. Amand Duran whose copies of Rembrandt 
and Diirer printed on old paper were so good that the most serious “authorities” were 
deceived by them, till they found out that M. Duran always signed the plates, not being 
a swindler. It is to be wished some “‘real etchers” were as honest and would tell how 
their “‘plates”’ were made. 

Endless swindles have been perpetrated in this way not only by so-called artists, 
but by engravers, printers, and especially by publishers. The late Herbert Railton 
was much exploited in this fashion; I have been told by him that he never made an 
etching in his life, but any number of his pen drawings, and some of mine I find— 
without my knowledge—have been published and sold as such. 


* On one occasion I went to a maker, or seller of coloured etchings in Paris. He said he knew nothing 
of the method, but he knew the maker of them would refuse to tell me how they were done. I then went 
to Fritz-Thaulow whose work was reproduced most extensively and popularly in Paris and sold all over 
the world. And he said, “‘Me—Mon Cher, all I know is I sign the prints and I get a checque.” 

t Some of the best colour etchings—are really coloured wood blocks made in the Japanese fashion 
—with a copper key block—instead of wood—others have lithographed tones applied to them or the 
inks are rolled or gummed up and those parts wanted dark, washed off, etched and printed. 


278 


OF MONOTYPES AND RELIEF PLATES CHAPTER XXXV 


HERE are several ways of using copper and other surfaces to print from, 

which have come to be classed with etching, though they have no relation 

to it. The most popular is the Monotype. This is simply a painting made 

in monochrome or colour on the face or back of a copper or other plate. The 
work is done in oil colours or ink, the subject being painted with brushes or rags. Ora 
flat tone of ink or colour can be rolled on the plate, and the design made by wiping 
or pulling the colour off with rags and brushes, or it may be made with turpentine like 
a water colour. The whole is but a development of wiping tones on or off an etched 
plate in printing, without any drawing or biting on it. 

The most important matter is not to put, or leave too much colour on the plate, or 
use too much oil or turpentine, otherwise when run through the press, there is a chance 
of the whole subject being squeezed together in a mass, or even squirted out from under 
the cylinder, all over the blankets, even over the artist. 

The method has been employed for years, but until lately only as an amusing game, 
in studios where there happened to be a copper plate press, when a number of men 
would make sketches of an evening on plates, and when finished print them. But in 
these last times it has fallen into the hands of the serious ones, and solemn, pompous, 
ponderous productions are turned out for the edification of the outsider, though what 
earthly merit there is in a printed squashed oil painting, it would be hard to discover, 
and if the work is really of importance and has taken some time to do,—I believe there 
are methods of keeping the colour wet—why the artist should risk losing his labour 
by running it through a printing press is unknown. ‘The press does give the work by 
pressure a delightful rich, soft, velvety quality, but this is accidental. 

Herkomer, with that everlasting itch he possessed for doing the wrong thing, saw 
a fortune in it, and with that amazing cleverness for inventing something which someone 
had invented long before, dusted black lead, or something of the sort, on the face of the 
monotype, and then deposited a copper surface on it. He patented this only to dis- 
cover that he had patented electrotyping, and though he formed a company and hired 
out plates and chemicals and did a number of prints himself, and gave demonstrations, 
the process died or disappeared, owing to too much booming, before he did. Whether 
seriously or not it was known as the Herke-type. He also invented (was it after 
reading Senefelder who describes it) the mezzotint or scraped manner in lithography, 
which every lithographer had been using for a hundred years, As for this monotype 
method of Herkomer, Spongetype I think it was called, the mere turning of the soft 
drawing into a hard metal printing surface destroyed all its accidental charm, but 
Herkomer had a habit of getting hold of the wrong end of things if he thought they 
would pay, just as he tried to prove that faked photogravures were “just as good”’ 
as real etchings. He only succeeded in injuring his reputation as an etcher and an 
honest man, but he has had some followers in this fashion. 

Some really interesting results, however, have been obtained. One is to take a 
sheet of glass, set it up against the light, draw or paint the design on it, with brushes, 


279 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


fingers, rags, lay a sheet of paper on it, and with a burnisher or roller rub it off on the 
paper; the results are at times amusing. 

There are numerous relief methods of making metal plates; the design is either 
drawn in some acid-resisting ink or chalk, or painted on the plate, and the untouched 
parts etched away, thus making a relief plate. This is what Blake did in the Songs 
of Innocence and other books. 

Or the drawing may be transferred in lithographic ink to the plate, slightly bitten, 
and then more ink rolled on, the lines slightly heated, when the ink will flow down their 
sides and protect them, and the biting continued till the lines stand up sufficiently to 
print from. This was the basis of the invention of “‘process,”’ photo-engraving. 

There are endless other dodges of this sort which may be practised or invented, 
but real etching still retains its fascination for real etchers. 


280 


OF PRINTING CHAPTER XXXVI 


S soon as the plate is bitten, it is the custom of most modern etchers to 

hurry, by special appointment, to the printer, who is a most important 

personage and to be treated with the greatest respect, to get a proof pulled 

by him in order to see ‘“‘what is in the plate.”’ So great a person is he that 
he calls his workroom a studio, while his signature as printer may be worth more than 
the artist’s and he will add, or take away, in his proofs, anything the artist wishes, or 
cannot do. If the proof is right, the plate may be left with the printer—it is often sent 
—and the only further concern of the artist is to sell it, or to sign the prints from it, 
which he did not print, and pocket the cash, for money is the aim and end of most 
modern etching. 

Now the rare—rarest—etcher, who is an artist, does not care a cent what “‘is in 
the plate.” It is what he can get out of it, on his own press, not what a professional 
printer can get out of it, that he wants. At times when the etcher is doubtful as to 
his lines—the strength or depth of them—he may take the plate to a professional to 
see what the printer can get from it on his big press by his professional methods. There 
may be times when the etcher is compelled to seek the aid of a professional printer— 
in such a case it is only to be hoped he can find a competent workman, rather than a 
conceited poseur. 

The young etcher is taught in the schools that he should get his plate, after end- 
less work, into such a state that it is fool proof, that the printer can grind out just as 
many prints as are wanted, if it is steel faced, just as alike as possible. In the whole 
affair the artist is an unfortunate necessity. The student is told that because Rem- 
brandt did not use tone, but wiped cleanly, he, the coming commercial genius, should 
do that, this, and all the rest of it; though some of the printers, to account for their 
work, say he did use tone, retroussage, and all their other tricks. No one to-day knows 
what Rembrandt’s proofs really looked like, whether he left a tone on the plate or not, 
for in the centuries that have passed the ink has dried up and dried out and in. It is 
said in some cases, as I have stated, that it has become powder and dust; there is no 
doubt however that almost all his dry points are poor, weak and grey in colour now— 
utterly unlike what they were when he printed them; and even supposing he did print 
in this fashion, as they now appear it was bad, it can be improved on and should not be 
imitated no matter how easy that is. Whistler’s printing was far better; and the 
artist who does not print in his own way but imitates someone else is not an artist. 
Carry on tradition, but do not succumb to it. 

This is the modern spirit in which etching is taught, and etchings are manufactured. 
But as Hamerton said in Etching and Etchers, there have not been thirty great etchers 
born in the world, and in the intervening fifty years there have not been as many as 
the fingers of one hand added to his list, though there are dozens of etching societies, 
hundreds of teachers, thousands of students, and once in a while a real etching is 
produced, and generally ignored, by the dealers, collectors, and critics on the hunt 
for it. 


281 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


The artist should try to get out of his plate what he tried to put into it. If, how- 
ever, there is nothing in the lines when clean wiped, and he hires a printer to hide this 
fact in a cloud of ink, he is an incompetent and a fraud. How he gets his print is his 
own business if he does the work himself. He may wipe it like a visiting-card, or smother 
it in ink, so long as he gets what he wants. 

Incidentally if it will not print as a visiting-card, if the line when seen cleanly 
printed is not good, the etching is bad, no matter how much it is faked by the printer ; 
but a good plate always can be helped by good printing. 

An etching is a purely individual statement, but most etchers have no individuality 
—only a craving to prig or steal from someone else—especially if he is commercially 
_successful, with as little trouble and as much remuneration as possible for themselves. 

There has been as much development and improvement in printing etchings since 
Rembrandt’s time—rather since Whistler worked—as in biting them. 

The proper way to print an etching is as follows—though the method is unknown 
to most professors and practitioners, and was unknown to Whistler. | 

Purchase the best ink you can get (Frankfort or French Black and Burnt Umber 
—you want no other colours) in oil colour tubes with large mouths. Look out, though 
you won’t know it till a proof is pulled, that the ink is not slimy and weak or adulterated 
with blue or red, or half ground full of hard grains of colour which will tear the design 
to pieces. The conservative British ink makers, or ink dealers (you cannot get decent 
ink in America), will supply you only with small-mouthed tubes, and the ink comes out 
the wrong end when they are squeezed. ‘This is not really conservatism, but sharp- 
ness, as half the ink is wasted and the other half gets hard. The professional printer 
grinds his ink and thins it with oil, every day, and never gets the same tone. The 
artist who knows where to get ink of a uniform reliable quality buys it in tubes and is 
sure that all his ink is the same, unless he has been swindled by the maker. He tells 
the maker to let him have it mixed either with thin, medium, or thick oil, and if not 
right, he adds more oil or more colour, that is, ink in powder. If your ink is right it is 
well to buy a lot of it—as the next time the ink is ground it may turn out quite different. 

In grinding and mixing ink himself the etcher frequently gets tiny grains or bits 
of dirt which make scratches; good ink, if properly ground and mixed, never has any 
grit or lumps in it, any more than paint, and artists no longer grind their colours. 

Press out the ink on a marble Ink Slab, which with the heater and jigger must be 
purchased and arranged on a table in this fashion. On the right is the ink slab, the 
ink should be squeezed out of the tube, when in tubes, at the left-hand top! of the slab 
in a pile, and pulled away with the roller as wanted. At the right-hand top corner 
put some oil which should be mixed with the ink with a big palette knife as it is wanted. 
Get the ink ready first when printing. 

If dry ink is used, put it in a little pile high up on the slab, make a hole in the 
centre with your finger or the palette knife, leaving a wall of ink all round, pour the 


1T am left handed and so it might be better to put it at the right-hand corner and reverse the 
other directions. 


282 


OF PRINTING 


oil gradually in the hole, first with the palette knife and then with the muller gradually 
drag ink and oil away, grinding them together with the muller on the slab till the mass 
is of the consistency of butter. 

Next the ink slab is the Jigger, a wooden box open in front. Whiting and the ink 
rags are kept init. On the top of this the plate is wiped. Next to it is the iron heater, 
the same size and height as the jigger. The Heater is an iron box, open at the bottom, 
standing on four legs; inside it is a ring of gas pipe, pierced on the top with holes. 
There is a tap outside in front with a forced draught, and to this is attached a flexible 
tube; the steel-ringed ones are the best, rubber rots and breaks; the other end of the 
tube is fastened to a gas jet. It is absolutely necessary to have gas and water at hand.* 

It is best to place these things in the manner I have mentioned because, if the heater 
is alongside the ink, that will get heated, and poor proofs may result, as the warmer the 
ink is made, the thinner and weaker it becomes. 

Further on to the left should be convenient shelves within reach, without moving, 
for acids, varnishes, etc., and drawers in the table or case on which the Slab, Jigger, 
and Heater stand, for rollers, tools, etc. Everything within reach. 

Before commencing to print the Press must be adjusted. On the moving bed which 
slides between the upper and lower cylinders, put a piece of smooth zinc, rather smaller 
than the bed of the press; this eases the pressure. Then the upper cylinder must be cov- 
ered with blankets; two “facers” (smooth ones) and four “‘ backs” (the heavy fluffy 
sort). Put the facers on the bed of the press one after the other, quite flat, and the four 
blankets on top of them arranged like steps, so the cylinder can mount them more easily. 

Take the copper plate before it is inked, lay it on the top of the sheet of zinc on 
the bed of the press, face upward, place six sheets of blotting paper on the top of the 
plate ; some printers also put a sheet under the plate; on them put flat, the bed of the 
press being pulled out as far as necessary to take them, one after the other, as I have 
said, two of the ‘‘facer” blankets; on these the four “backs”; pull them slightly under 
the upper roller by turning the wheel toward you, till they grip, throw them over the upper 
cylinder, and put the plate as near in the centre of the bed as possible, and place it with 
the greatest length parallel with the upper cylinder, so that it will go through quicker ; 
then lay a sheet of paper on the face of the plate, lay the blotters on that, pull down 
the blankets on top of all, smoothing them by pulling them with your open hand tightly 
towards you, if the blankets are not smooth, they will be cut and the proof ruined; 
run your hands over them, and if you feel a crease, lift them and smooth it out, and 
then turn the wheel and pull the edges of the plate under the roller; if it will not go, 
the press must be turned backward till the plate comes out and the screws at the sides 
loosened to lessen the pressure, if it runs too easily they must be tightened, but the 
adjustment of the press can only be learned with practice. All these things are to be 
judged by experience, in printing the etcher printer feels the grip the press has on the 
plate, and he only tries a bit of it, and then removes the paper and looks at the plate 
mark made in it. He must be very careful of the adjustment, unless all his plates are 

* Nore: The electric heater which can be attached to an ordinary light is far better—get the 

largest possible, square not round, with three degrees of heat. 


283 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


of the same thickness, otherwise he will buckle and bend them, and the press during 
printing often wants adjustment, as the blankets with the pressure become thinner. 
If he is not certain of the pressure, he may run the uninked plate through the press 
and he will, on holding the plate up towards the light, on a level with his eye, see the 
lines of the design embossed in the blank paper—a blind proof. 

The plate is now ready to print from, the paper having been previously damped, 
—best, as I have said, at least a day before. 

As to making the printing paper ready, some paper may be damped just before 
beginning to print—other sorts require days—the method is the same in both cases. 
Never for trial proofs use any paper except that on which you propose to print the 
edition ; using cheap paper for trials is vile economy, as different sorts of papers fre- 
quently give quite different results in the prints. 

To damp the paper, take some sheets of ordinary dry paper; lay them on a sheet 
of glass or zinc or a big flat tile. Take a sheet of the printing paper and with a bowl of 
water beside you, dip a sponge in the bowl draining off the excess of water; go over 
the whole sheet; lay another on top of it and repeat the process. Damp as many 
sheets as you want to print and put some dry paper on top, then another zinc 
or sheet of glass, and a weight on that. If the paper requires several days’ 
wetting to get properly damped through—it must be damp all through or 
it will not take the ink—turn it every day, and if it begins to dry, wet it again 
with the sponge, but be careful that it does not mildew or rot—it will give 
off a vile smell, or yellow streaks or spots will appear, if this is beginning; then 
it must be allowed to dry, or it will rot or stick together. If you wish it to dry, spread 
it out, don’t leave it in the pile—it will mildew. Some sorts of paper, bank note, for 
example, must be placed between sheets of damp muslin—or cloth under pressure to 
thoroughly wet them—otherwise streaks will appear. * 

Japanese paper can be damped in one of two ways either just before printing or 
some days before; in either case it must be done very carefully, else the sponge will 
pull fibres and fluff out of it, and those parts will print white, and it cannot be brushed, 
and it is most important that the water touches every bit of it. If left for some days 
it gets bloated and swells up and feels like vellum but won’t print unless it is placed 
between sheets of blotting paper and run through the press, or a letter copying press, 
when the water it has absorbed is squeezed out and it is in excellent condition for print- 
ing, but it makes an awful mess of the press and blankets which are soaked ; after pass- 
ing through the press it may be left under pressure for a while. Or it may be damped 
in the usual way—a few sheets at a time when one is ready to print. 

Some printers pass all the sheets of paper held loosely in their hands through a bath 
of water or pass them under a tap, but the sponge method is the best; the printer sees 
what he is doing. Before commencing to print turn the pile of wet paper upside down; 
the bottom sheets are flattest and dampest. All paper before printing must be gone over 
with a soft brush to remove drops of water, or dust, and to make it flat and smooth. 

* Hard paper may be softened too by making very wet and putting under heavy pressure for a day. 

284 


OF PRINTING 


The ink roller is the first thing needful. Formerly—until within the last few 
years—a dabber made of tightly rolled or built up cloth or flannel was used; this was 
held in the hand, dabbed in the ink on the ink slab, and then pounded on the plate, 
and the ink forced into the lines. The ink went in all right, but the lines went out. 
Fine work scarcely lasted any time; lines were blunted; after a certain number of 
proofs were pulled, the edges of the lines became rounded and lost their sharpness ; 
and dry point vanished. But even since Whistler’s death all has been changed. First 
came the rubber or composition roller—really a wood engraver’s proving roller, the 
rubber or composition cylinder,—with which the ink was rolled on the plate; but in 
the last two or three years, the principle of the lithographic ink roller with improve- 
ments has been adapted to etching printing. 

The lithograph roller handles do not turn and finger covers must be used. The 
etching roller works on bearings and the handles do not revolve; instead of the pad or 
vertical dabber, made of flannel, the new roller is covered with it. Roll the roller back- 
ward and forward over the ink on the slab till it is covered with it, then roll it on the 
plate—tolling the ink off on the face of the roller. The plate can either be inked with a 
uniform flat tone, or with the most subtle gradation, in a tenth of the time and ten times 
more certainty then with the dabber, while the lines of the design in, or on the plate 
are not injured at all, as when the ink is pounded on them with the dabber. Yet if 
this new invention is shown to some authority, he will at once find fault with it or try 
to; but in the time of Rembrandt the authority would not have been an etcher but an 
engineer or a pedler. The roller is only made as yet in New York and I do not know 
the maker’s name. When the surface of the roller becomes saturated with ink and 
gets hard, a layer can be cut off just as is done with a dabber, and a new soft surface 
obtained. 

As to inking the plate with the roller, the best way is to have the gas under the 
heater lighted and the surface of it warm—not so hot that you cannot bear your hand on 
it. This is easy enough to regulate with gas. If gas is not available, an oil lamp made 
for the purpose may be placed in the heater. If the ink is too weak, add more colour 
to it; if too stiff, thin it with oil; but add very little oil—a few drops at a time; the 
pure black is usually too cold in colour; see that the ink maker does not put blue in it ; 
add some umber,—most proofs want umber added. If the ink leaves the roller easily 
and covers the plate, do not put it on the heater but keep it on the jigger; if it does 
not come off, slide the plate on to the heater. The heat, or want of it, is as important 
as the oil. If the work on the plate is very strongly bitten, and the lines are deep or 
broad or both, the surest way to fill them, with ink, when commencing printing, is, when 
the plate is covered with ink, to rub still more ink into the lines with a paper stump, or 
fingers charged with ink, and then, when filled, roll the inked surface flat again before 
wiping. 

Take a piece of wiping canvas, fold it about a foot square—some use it much larger— 
again fold it loosely into a smaller square pad that covers the palm of the hand ; this takes 
practice, passing it from one hand to the other ; and when flat place it in the palm, and with 


285 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


a pulling motion that can only be acquired with difficulty and a lot of skill, remove the ink 
from the surface of the plate, painting it off from the dark to the lights. The professional 
printers I have seen at work never do this. They rub it off anyway as soon as possible— 
only being careful not to pull the ink out of the lines—and this is the most difficult thing 
to do in printing. If it comes off easily it is all right, if not slide the plate on the heater 
and the ink will be softened and come off. But go on wiping and wiping and wiping, 
neither taking all the ink off of the surface, nor any of it, out of the lines, and this is at 
first impossible to avoid. Gradually the ink on the surface of the plate grows less and 
less, gradually spots and streaks disappear, and though at times they look all right on 
the plate they must be got rid of—they look all wrong on the paper. At last a golden 
glow spreads over the plate. Then it is wiped. 

As to the printing canvas, it is of several qualities; try them all and use those 
you like; a very rough coarse canvas and a fine muslin or taffeta rag, are all one usually 
wants, however. When the canvas is new or fresh it is liable to scratch the plate slightly, 
but these scratches are very superficial and quickly disappear. If the unused canvas 
is washed and dried it will become soft and not scratch ; or it may be rolled up and twisted 
about—the printer has endless tricks; nor will it scratch as soon as it is charged with 
ink. Paper and ordinary rags may often be employed to wipe with. If the ink comes 
off easily, that is, slowly but uniformly, from the plate, the plate need not be heated, 
which softens the ink, unless the artist likes; all this is a personal matter. 

The first rag used to wipe with may be clean, to get the superfluous ink off; but 
when the ink is nearly off a dirty rag will clean it best—a warm rag saturated with ink 
(it is difficult to manage and impossible to explain)—and the plate will probably have to 
be put on the heater, but when the golden glow has come the plate is nearly ready to 
print. This getting ready, wiping, may take five minutes, or an hour. 

Finally, the tone on the plate must be reduced still more by caressing it with the 
palm of the hand slightly inked, though by this time the artist’s hand is usually inky 
enough, and then rubbing the palm on a lump of whiting kept in the jigger. To clean 
the plate with the hand is an art in itself, and the hundredth attempt to do it will result 
most likely in streaks or wiping the ink out of the lines. Some plates do not want 
wiping with the hand. 

When finally cleaned with the dirty rag, or a clean one, or the hand,—every plate 
requires different treatment and experiments,—it is almost ready to print. Professional 
printers before printing clean the edges of the plate which they regard with reverence ; 
artists don’t, the ink on the edge adds to the effect; but not only must the back of the 
plate be clean, but care must be taken that no ink or dirt gets on the back; otherwise, 
a bump or pimple will at once appear in the face and print, and this can only be ham- 
mered out.—Carefully look at and feel the backs of plates before printing. 

But it will be frequently found when the plate is wiped, it is too dry—wanting in 
richness and fulness; the professional printer obtains this by heating the plate again 
and going over the parts he wishes to strengthen with a very soft silk rag folded loosely, 
with a trembling sort of motion of his arm and hand, which, when one can do the trick, 


286 


OF PRINTING 


causes the ink to a certain extent to come out of the lines and spread on either side of 
them. This is called ‘“‘retroussage.” Whistler used to call it “the printer’s pot of 
treacle.” It is a wretched artless makeshift to be avoided, like the printer. 

A far better way is to continue wiping with a heavily ink-charged warm rag till one 
gets the required tone, or sharpness, for with a dirty, ink-saturated, warm rag, and a 
warm plate (only it must not get so warm as to smear), one can wipe ink on to the plate 
as easily as wipe it off; that is, after years of practise and under the right conditions. 
Therefore it is well to keep old dirty rags, heating them before using, by placing them on 
the heater, for the final wiping. Do not wash them, as washing only half cleans them 
and wholly takes all the texture out of them. Use them till they become a hard mass 
and then burn them—otherwise they are liable to burn your place down by spontaneous 
combustion—anyway don’t put them away in drawers. 

If highlights are wanted they can be got by drawing them with a match, stick, or 
stump. When the wiping is finished, if too bright, tone them down with a rag. 

Do not think, however, that everything goes smoothly in printing. You may get 
a good proof with the first attempt and not be able to get another, if the temperature 
should change or something else happen, that day. Printing is a sensitive art and all 
printers know this; the best offices now are kept by steam heat or cool air, at the same 
temperature all the year round. The artist can scarce do this in his studio, and suffers 
in consequence; day after day he cannot work decently, and then suddenly everything 
goes perfectly—or doesn’t go at all. 

When the plate is wiped, put it face upward on the sheet of zinc in the adjusted press 
—many etchers put a clean sheet of common white paper under it; get a sheet of the 
damped paper from the pile beside the press, lay it down on the plate; the paper should be 
just a little larger than the plate, with more space at the bottom than top; look at it 
first carefully to see if there is any dust, or drops of water on the paper, if so brush 
them off ; a soft blacking brush is good. Lay the paper carefully on the inked plate ; put 
the blotting papers on it; pull down the blankets, seeing by pulling them towards you 
that they are flat, if not smooth them out, then pull the plate through the press; on a 
star press pull as steadily as possible; a geared one runs steadily. 

When the proof is through the press you can tell this by the feel of the pressure, 
though the cylinder should not jump off the plate; lift the blankets, throw them over 
the cylinder, take up the blotters altogether. The print will stick to the bottom one, 
and the print adhering to the bottom blotter should be laid flat on a board. 

One matter to remember is that the first two or three proofs scarce ever show the 
full strength of the lines in the plate; the ink does not get in them; but after three or 
four trials they should be filled with it, and for some time give excellent proofs. 

When the plate has passed through the press, the proof will be found, or should be, 
adhering to the bottom sheet of blotting paper, when the blankets are lifted, this last 
one of the six sheets of blotters, placed as backing, on top of it. Lift the sheet of blotting 
paper, lay it on the floor or a table, with the proof still adhering to it. Place the other 
proofs as pulled beside it. If there is any sign of their curling up—which there should 


287 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


not be—put one on top of the other, which will stop that. The blotting paper not only 
adds elasticity in the press, but it also dries the damp paper, squeezes the moisture 
out of it as it passes through the press. And at the same time the proof sticks to the 
blotter perfectly flat, and remains flat, as it dries, and requires no subsequent hanging 
on clothes lines, hot air drying, or pressure to flatten it, which smashes the lines. In this 
way the proof dries naturally and flatly, and I never met a printer who used the method 
or knew about it. I have taught one to use it. 

One other matter—pull steadily, never jerk the press; you will feel the plate being 
nipped by the cylinders, you will feel it coming off them; pull easily and slowly and 
steadily, or you will break the press. The geared press with a flywheel will do this steady 
pulling for you. 

When the day’s work is finished, if the proofs seem fairly dry, they may be stripped 
off the blotters and placed between dry fresh ones; then they will not cockle. If not 
dry, and the drying of the paper may take a couple of days, leave them alone—the ink 
won’t dry for weeks. If they stick to the blotter be careful, or you will crease or crack 
them when you strip them off. 

If there are folds in the print, or too sharp a plate mark, the pressure on the press 
must be reduced, otherwise the blankets will be cut, the proofs cut, the plate buckled 
and the press broken. In learning to print, all these things will happen most likely. 
At any rate, they have happened to me. 

After pulling a proof add a fresh sheet of blotting paper to the five—on the top; 
look at them carefully to see that there are no creases in them save the plate mark; 
otherwise they will show in the proof as white lines. Also in printing in this way it is 
necessary to frequently change all the blotters and sometimes all the blankets as the 
dampness of the paper is squeezed out on them much more than when ordinary plate 
paper is used as backing, though this should be changed every time. In a good proof 
the lines are all embossed by the ink pulled out of them which should stand up on the 
surface. If the hand is passed over the print, the lines can be felt in reliefi—one way 
of distinguishing between an etching and a photogravure. After finishing printing 
a plate, wash it with turpentine or kerosene, seeing that all the lines are free of 
ink; otherwise it will harden in them and have to be boiled out. Everything must be 
thoroughly cleaned with turpentine or the ink will dry and clog everything. The 
printer’s hands can be best cleaned with hot water and powdered Hudson’s soap. 

With these few directions and great practice one should eventually learn to print. 
But print in your own way ; try for the result you want and not someone else’s. Never 
try slavishly to make all your proofs alike when pulled from the same plate; if you get a 
good result, follow that, but you will not be a decent printer till you can repeat it; and 
if an etcher, you will see in each proof you pull some new thing, and you will strive for 
that, whether you burnish or add dry point, or change the way of printing. Every proof 
should be a distinct and individual work of art. If you do not care for printing, you are 
not anetcher. If the printing does not appeal to you as much as the drawing or biting, 
you are not an etcher, though you may be a very successful maker of copper plates. 

288 


OF PRINTING 


Learn the craft of printing thoroughly (and you can only learn printing in a printing 
office with a good professional printer), and once you have learnt it, go ahead in your 
own way and do something of your own; otherwise you will never do anything. 

Whistler usually trimmed his proofs down to the edges. Mr. Menpes said he laid 
strips of glass on the edges so he could see—using them as a straight edge, and cut the 
margin with a razor—certainly a good plan; but I have seen him frequently trim the 
edges with a pair of scissors and never saw him use glass. 

The reason he trimmed his proofs was because either he wished to save the old paper, 
or because the plate had cut the proof and it had to be trimmed ; undoubtedly a trimmed 
proof looks better than an untrimmed one, but if a mount cut close up to the edge of the 
proof is used it will look better still. 

The disadvantage—with many etchings it would be an advantage—of trimming 
proofs is that with handling they are bound to be damaged ; the paper around them pro- 
tects them, and if it is torn or soiled or frayed it does not matter, but if the paper is 
trimmed up to the print, in the course of time the print will be ruined, as when un- 
mounted, if the prints are handled, the edges will disappear from this handling. It is 
rare to see an old proof with margin untrimmed. They have usually been cut, or torn, 
or worn away. 

If a large edition of a plate is wanted it must be steel-faced—that is, a coating of 
steel must be deposited on it—electroplated; when this surface begins to wear out the 
worn one can be removed and a new one can be added. In this way, or by making elec- 
trotypes of the original, any number of prints can be made from aplate. Most electro- 
types are very poor, but I have tried some by Emery Walker of London which are 
perfect. 

Seymour Haden is said, as soon as he got his plates right, to have had them steel 
faced, but his plates were all, or almost all, printed for him by Goulding; I do not know 
if Haden could print. There is however no such unpleasant, unsympathetic, slippery sur- 
face to print from as steel. 

Whistler’s Thames series were very early steel faced, after a few fine proofs had been 
pulled by Delatre and himself; and after they were steel faced large numbers of prints 
were pulled from them. I suggested to the late Frederick Keppel that he should purchase 
the plates (this was during Whistler’s lifetime and I told him of it) from the Fine Art 
Society, who owned them, remove the steel facing; this was done, and Goulding got a 
number of remarkable prints, for they were in wonderfully good condition, preserved by 
the protecting steel face,—not however to be compared with Whistler’s rare early print- 
ing, for he had not Whistler’s advice or a proof of his to go by. Goulding could imitate 
and follow an artist’s proof; but he could not invent, he could not prove; he was not 
an artist, and he was a most conceited person. 

As to the number of impressions that may be taken from a copper or zinc bitten 
plate, they vary with each. Generally speaking, the stronger the biting the longer the 
plate will print, but the sharpness and brilliancy frequently go after a few proofs are 
pulled, and the edges of the lines become rounded. If steel faced, any number of 


289 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


impressions may be made, as the facing can be renewed. The artist however limits 
his editions. 

Dry points unsteeled cannot be printed in any number; the best will only yield 
a few proofs; but at the present time editions of a hundred are being hawked about in 
the name of Charity. Charity which suffers long. Either then these plates are steel 
faced and then thousands could be printed just as easily—and they have no commercial 
value—or there is some discovery about printing dry points and preserving them that I 
know nothing about. Though I believe with my American roller I could get a large 
number off any plate. Anyway all the genuine dry point quality is lost. 

When, however, an edition of a plate, as for this book is published, it is impos- 
sible, or not worth while for the artist to print it himself, he rarely would have the 
time, and he rarely would be able to print a large number of impressions all alike. 
He must then depend on a reliable printer and in the firm of Peters Brothers, I have 
found such printers in the country, genuine craftsmen, who love their craft, and do 
their work intelligently and well. They allowed me to work with them, to get the 
proofs as I wanted them, and then carried out my wishes, and so added to the complete- 
ness of the book. 

The plates for a large edition, as in this book, must also be steel faced—at times 
electrotypes are made and printed from—when the steel facing wears it can be taken off 
and a new face added. It isa coating of steel, deposited by electro plating on the surface 
of the copper, it may also be added to dry points. Steel faced plates, however, are not 
pleasant to print from, being slimy and slippery, but they add enormously to the numbers 
of prints that can be pulled. Though with the new inking rollers, I have printed near 
one hundred proofs from an unsteeled dry point. The greatest advances in printing are 
the inking roller and the electric heater, both American labour saving inventions, but 
unlike most things of that sort, really valuable improvements. 


290 


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OF TRIALS AND STATES CHAPTER XXXVII 


TATES, if not an invention of the Devil, certainly are the spawn of the Dealers. 

Yet trials and states are a joy to the artless collector, the ignorant cataloguer, 

the canny shopman, and directors are as bad. 

Now these subjects should be carefully considered, as they never have 
been. As to trials; while the artist is biting his plate, or making a dry point, or mez- 
zotinting, he may either get frightened at the way in which he thinks it is, or is not 
biting ; or in the case of a dry point or mezzotint, want to see what he is doing. He will 
then pull a trial, and this alone is a genuine trial proof of the plate. But nowadays, 
trials cover a multitude of commissions. First, the earliest, the first proof from what 
the artist hopes is the finished plate, is known as a trial, and this may be accepted as 
such, and is genuine. But if the artist is satisfied—which he rarely is—he either follows 
this trial himself, trying to improve on it, or turns it over to the printer to follow. As 
a matter of fact, even if the plate is properly bitten, drawn or scraped, and printed, it, 
the first trial proof, has rarely ink enough in the lines, and it is almost certain it will be 
necessary to pull three or four proofs or impressions before it is properly inked and 
properly wiped ; but when this is done and not till then it is “bon a tirer,” that is, ready 
to be printed from, as an edition. It has become the custom in published etchings, fre- 
quently to deliberately pull a number of such “proofs” and to call them “trial proofs.” 
They are nothing but swindles. Others are described as “‘artist’s proofs,’”—why not 
printer’s proofs? Footling scribbles, too, are added to the margin by the commercial 
etcher—in the case of reproductive etchings by the reproducer—and these are described 
as “‘remarque proofs,”’ and sold for a superior figure. And in other published plates 
there are proofs on Jap, on Vellum, on Van Gelder. And now when the plate is worn 
out it is made into a photogravure and printed in color, or stolen because of the 
rotten law of American copyright which permits it. ‘These are popular baits, and there 
are “proofs before letters,” ‘‘open letter proofs,” “lettered editions,” and I know not 
how many other traps are set for the innocent collector. I have even seen rubbings sold 
from accidental offsets—+.e. the print has been left on the press and used as a backing 
when it will come off on a clean sheet of paper in the right orientation. Sometimes this 
is done deliberately and the trash is dealt in as a valuable property; while in lithog- 
raphy the swindling is worse; the printer cleans the stone on an ordinary piece of tissue 
paper and throws it away; apparently in the case of Whistler, these half-inked tissues 
were rescued from the waste paper box and sold by an eminent dealer to an ignorant 
collector, as ‘‘rare China paper proofs.” 

The only genuine trial proofs are those made by the artist during his work, and the 
first two or three proofs, a better name, pulled when the plate is finished. No others 
are either trials or proofs; they are impressions, though each may vary. 

The matter of states has been equally prostituted, and equally great swindles per- 
petrated. Rembrandt deliberately perpetrated states and is responsible—though 
indirectly—for much dishonesty. He took out large parts of the design—of some of 
his plates—and etched entirely new compositions on them. Now a state really means 


293 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


that after an artist has been printing for a longer or shorter time a plate, he becomes 
dissatisfied with it, and he thinks he can improve it, or the plate becomes worn or some 
accident happens to it. So he changes it or again works at it. At any rate, a state 
means, that when a certain number of impressions have been pulled, then a radical and 
definite change is made in the work, and a trial of the worked-over plate made, and if 
satisfactory, a number of impressions pulled, thus constituting a second or further state ; 
and sometimes by conscientious artists this may be done four or five times. An unscru- 
pulous, mechanical, shop-keeping, pedling etcher does it, as often as he thinks the 
public, the critics, and the cataloguers, will stand it, or it can be, simply to make money, 
by compelling collectors to collect all “‘states” of as many of his machines as he can get 
them to speculate in. 

The cataloguer then comes along, and finding an accidental scratch, a bit of burr, 
on a weak part, or three lines somewhere, none of them on the same proof, at the same 
time, or a change in colour of ink, he utters a whoop and writes an article in The 
Know All Von Judea or La Gazettina of Moderne Kunst, and proves, as Whistler once 
said of one of the editors of one of the greatest of these authorities, that “he knows far 
more about my work than I do, and also that he knows nothing at all about it.” Haden 
describes a state as when ‘‘a distinct interval of time must always be supposed to have 
elapsed during which the spirit of the work has been allowed to cool and undergo a 
change, and it is not every addition—of a line—to a plate that constitutes a state, but— 
a complete change.”’ 

Now I know nothing of the production of proofs and states by any etchers save 
Whistler and myself. 

As to Whistler, I have stood beside him as he pulled his proofs—not that exactly 
for Whistler’s description of that person was, “‘the man who stands beside the printing 
press has the chance of making a good collection,’’—but I have had the inestimable 
privilege of being taught printing by him, while at his invitation I helped him. Some 
others have had the chance, but not the brains to profit by their opportunities. 

In Whistler’s Paris plates, all underbitten, because the ground came off, as the first 
trial proof was pulled, in almost every case he found them weak and: “Well,” he 
sighed, “‘it’s not right, I don’t like it; still, it’s the first, and somebody will.” And he 
wrote first proof on the back or margin of the fresh damp proof, before he threw it down 
between a folded sheet of dry blotting paper, on the floor. 

But in the few plates that came reasonably right, this is what happened. He 
looked carefully—so carefully and lovingly—at the impressions, and then he would take 
his little needle and caressingly strengthen a line, add a fold to a gown, or colour to a 
shadow in the plate. This might only mean a dot, a dash, ora line; it might only mean 
a black was made grey, with a touch of scraper or burnisher, a weak line made fair, with 
point—he really himself could not have told quite what he did—and between each pull 
of the plate, something usually was done, so that in some of the two Venetian series, there 
are not, as the wise men have said, ten states, and as they have catalogued, but about 
one hundred, for there was work on each proof. They have never yet had the brains 


204 


OF TRIALS AND STATES 


to compare the first proof with the last, and learn how much they have yet to see, and to 
learn; how little they have seen; but seeing they cannot perceive, and hearing they 
cannot understand. Such is the cataloguer and the compiler. 

In these authorities’ cataloguing of dry point, their incredible ignorance and stu- 
pidity is even more amazing and amusing. Now when dry point is added to an etched 
plate to strengthen it, every etcher, every printer—but no cataloguer—knows that it is 
impossible for the artist to say what effect thedry point, “the burr,” willhave on, or among, 
the bitten lines ; he adds it to the bitten plate in those parts where it seems weak or bare. 
The plodding toiler re-grounds the plate and painfully, laboriously, patches it up with a 
day’s labor with the point, and re-bites it. The artist coaxes the plate with a needle or 
diamond point, he inks it and then commences to wipe it. Immediately he sees a black 
blob; the dry point is too strong; he takes his scraper and scrapes the burr and the ink 
off together before he prints the plate, after dabbing ink with his finger on the part he 
has scraped, finishes wiping it, and pulls it through the press; that bit is pale, wiped 
out; the cataloguer comes along: ‘eleventh state, dry point almost gone.”’ It was the 
first. The artist adds a little more dry point; it is not strong enough; and this second 
state is described as the ninth. 

Finally, after several more workings by the artist with the point, we have, according 
to the cataloguer, the magnificent first state, which is really the last. It is in this way 
art history, art criticism, states, proofs, and catalogues are made by the artless. 

In fact in some plates no one but the artist knows which was the first state—and 
he has forgotten ! 

There is one other matter that might be referred to here—the signing of proofs— 
no artist will print an excessive number, nor will he sign any but the best, he should sign 
them either when printed—or when he sells them—never exhibit them unsigned—but 
if he wait until they are sold he may wait a lifetime—I remember seeing Whistler 
signing some of his early proofs just before his death—and he signed them with the 
latest butterfly, adding confusion to the confounded. This method of signing may be 
seen in early proofs of the Avery Collection in the New York Public Library. 

In fact, the collection of prints is becoming more and more a matter of rarities and 
states managed like stamp collecting while the prices of many artist’s works have been so 
ridiculously boomed that they are out of the reach of the ordinary individual. But 
collections may still be made by the intelligent if they have judgment and avoid the 
popular who are always with us—waiting for a fall. 


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OF PUBLISHING PRINTS | CHAPTER XXXVIII° 


HE publication of the print is the root of most modern etching, and like money 

the root of the evil of bad prints which flourishes, or did flourish, till the War. 

The labourer is worthy of his hire, but in etching he mostly is not worth hiring. 

Itis quite true that Diirer sent out his Frau to his stall in the marketplace, to sell 

his prints, and travelled in and drummed them during his journey to the Netherlands, 

remitting orders to be filled, that he took from emperors and business men by the way, to the 

house in Nuremberg. Rembrandt too worked for Clement de Jonghe, who was not only 

amongst the first, but is still amongst the small band of intelligent, appreciative dealers. 

But there is no question that Diirer did his prints for his own pleasure, and so did 

Rembrandt more or less, but the pecuniary success of these masters instilled into their 
pupils the hope of gain—before the love of art. And after Rembrandt came a slump. 

- And until Whistler and Meryon appeared, the love of etching for etching’s sake dis- 
appeared off the face of the earth. Meryon certainly etched in his way for the love of 
Paris. Haden as a most profitable amusement. Whistler because by etching alone he 
could say certain things he wanted tosay. But for years that was really all he got out of it. 

There were always a few people who cared for his prints. The French Set of Twelve, 
published in 1859, was sold and advertised for years at two guineas; but prices were 
gradually and slowly increased. The Thames Series were at one time published for 
a pound apiece. The first twelve Venice Plates were a failure at fifty pounds. There 
were a hundred proofs printed, for years few wanted them at four guineas each; and 
the Second Set of twenty-six of which fifty each were printed, (thirty-five of some) at the 
same price—the commercial can work out the figures—and Whistler never could get any 
more sets published. Meryon had sold his proofs for a few sous, but he did not print 
them, until he was cornered and boomed in the Stock Exchange fashion. Haden alone 
flourished. Then America was tapped by Cadart, a French dealer who brought a col- 
lection to New York and exhibited it. Clubs were formed all over the world. Then there 
began to appear books, portfolios, magazines illustrated with etchings made to order ; 
and large machines, original or reproductive, real or faked, with remarques and other 
baits to the amateur, vellum proofs and satin pulls, and I do not know what all—all over 
their surfaces, fronts and back. They were an appalling success, and the artist etchers 
were suppressed. Then came the huge architectural offences, and the poor artist could 
not get the chance to publish anything or even sell anything, while of these machines, 
the proofs could not be printed fast enough to supply the market. The dealers made 
fortunes, the printers made fortunes—even the people who turned out the plates made 
fortunes. All the while Whistler was working, Buhot was working. Haden went on 
making a fortune. It was a happy time all round for all but the artists. Hamerton has 
described it; others exploited it. 


1 Two artistic attempts were made in England by Hamerton and Seeley in the Portfolio to 
issue good etchings and here by S. R. Koehler in the American Art Review, and in his book Etching, 
The Review came to an end in two years, and the book on Etching, containing much valuable in- 
formation on prints and collecting, is scarce known. 


299 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


And then came another slump. Great work had been done but no one wanted it, 
and the only thing that was wanted was the huge plate, “the offence.”’ 

Disgusted, even bankrupt, Whistler smashed his plates. Meryon was dead. 
Haden sailed on triumphantly. But there was scarce a painter who did not etch—the 
world was flooded with etchings. 'Then—I do not see how or why—people got tired of 
etching, and the bubble burst. All but the few who really cared stopped etching. 

And for years the etcher hid his plates and lived somehow by something else. 

Still the big plate continued to appear in France, Germany, England, and America. 

But things got worse and worse, till—the new etchers appeared and they came on 
one after the other, mostly the product of Societies of Etchers and Engravers, and 
to these geniuses the same old methods were applied with new ones—the same old 
tricks, only more wonderful; geniuses were not only invented, but hallmarked, cata- 
logued, canonized; prints were subscribed before made and cornered before printed. 
You could pick up a Rembrandt any day: you were scarcely allowed a peep at these 
precious precocities. Whistler was knocked from his niche, so it was said. 

One new trick was a Guild of Print Sellers, who formed a ring, and tried to compel 
artists to join, with a threat of neither showing nor even selling etchers’ work if they did 
not join this trust. It was made in Germany, swallowed in England, approved in 
America by some dealers. 

The artist was frightened, and whole societies, including the Painter Etchers, joined ; 
but the scheme was, if not the invention, the support of, or supported by a number of 
German Jews, and they disappeared at the commencement of the War. Some got 
caught in Germany, a few volunteered—on which side was not stated—others removed 
their shop signs in England and America, and this scheme for encouraging print selling 
has not since been much in evidence. 

As to the number of proofs an artist should pull: that depends on two matters, how 
many the plate will yield and how many the Etcher within that number wishes to pull— 
or how many are ordered—generally speaking no more than one hundred—many plates 
won’t yield that—and frequently collectors would not have a print if they knew so 
many had been pulled. It is a good thing, as some do, to number proofs. All these 
genuine proofs of course should be pulled from the bare copper. 

The etching bubble will soon burst—even now, the dealer boomed and inflated are 
coming to their senses or collectors are—and dealers too. Prices of prints have soared to 
such a height that the chosen and boomed are frightened for the crash is coming, and 
swell studios will be vacant and swell artists forlorn. 


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OF THE PRESERVATION OF PRINTS CHAPTER XXXIX 


TCHINGS and other prints should be placed in sunk, cut-out mounts, the 

back of which should be of white paper—mounting boards; and the prints 

should only be fastened down at the top corners by folded bits of adhesive paper. 

If there are cockles in them they should be properly pressed—but not till long 
after they are dried,—and if printed in the way described in this book, they will require 
very little pressing. It is best to get a mounter and print cutter to do this if necessary. 
Before being mounted they should be placed on sheets of drawing paper, to judge their 
colour, which, if the paper they are printed on is thin, will greatly improve their appear- 
ance. Ifthe mount is fastened at the top and hinged, it can be lifted up and the margins 
of the print examined; while the print may be raised up, and the paper looked at from 
the back. The real, the true collector loves to handle, to fondle his prints, to caress 
them, as well as to look at them. 

Now as to looking at prints, they should be held sideways to the light; this will 
cause the embossed lines to cast a shadow, and this gives the true effect to the etched 
lines, in fact adds to their effect. And the collector should get all the effect he can, all 
the effect the artist tried for, out of his prints. 

The shape of the mount is as important as the colour. All etchings should be so 
mounted (that is, if they are of reasonable size) that the mounts may be all upright. 
A definite size of mount must be chosen, roughly six inches taller than the tallest upright 
print, five inches wider than the broadest one. There are positive and fixed proportions 
for mounting a print, as for printing a book, and equally fixed rules, scarce any of which 
are known to or observed by mount cutters, collectors, printers, or etchers, even by 
museums or galleries. If uniform sizes were adopted, print shows could be arranged 
with half the present delay, trouble, and expense. 

First, all prints must be mounted of the same height measured from the top, and 
that height should be two inches. The sides should both be at least half an inch wider— 
better an inch wider ; there should then be at least four inches of mount at the bottom. 
The mounts all the same size, the openings only cut to fit the prints; therefore they will 
always fit the same sized frame, box, or portfolio. 

As to the colour of the mounts: never use dead white, or any strongly coloured 
paper ; none but creamy yellowish tints. Any others always make the prints look mean. 
Gold mounts are vile for etchings. A simple yellow-toned paper or board—very slightly 
yellow, really ivory-toned—is best of all. At any rate the mount must be lower in tone 
than the paper of the print which will concentrate the effect on that. 

There are many things to-day to be guarded against in collecting etchings, amongst 
them outrageous frauds. The worst was perpetrated some years ago by an etcher who 
made a series of pen drawings, had them reproduced by a photo-engraver, and after 
more or less tinkering at them with a point, sold them as etchings. The swindle was 
detected, and the Etcher is almost forgotten. 

It is quite easy in most cases to detect these frauds by simply passing the fingers 


303 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


lightly over the print. The sham etching has no relief on the paper and the fingers glide 
over the surface without feeling any resistance. On a genuine etching the lines can be 
distinctly felt. The colour, too, of the lines is different in the fake; it is mostly flat and 
grey. And the quality of the lines also, unless they have been gone over with a point or 
burin, is mean, because there is no depth to them,—they hold no ink. 

Many swindles and fakes and photographic deceptions have been perpetrated in 
late years, but the genuine etcher will not condescend to such tricks, and the genuine 
photo-engraver usually signs his name on the plate; though he often conceals it for the 
purpose of deceiving—as a joke—the elect, or so that the print may not be injured or 
disfigured. 

But briefly, the person who cannot tell a reproduction from an original, a commercial 
print from an artist’s proof, had better not collect, catalogue, or curate, certainly not 
without consulting someone who can tell him what he is getting, what he is looking at, 
when he sees it. 

To artists who have their plates printed for them, there is always a danger of more 
prints being pulled than were ordered, and in a few cases of these not being handed 
to the artist or destroyed. It is the custom of printers that the master printer may, 
if he likes, ask the etcher to sign for him, to dedicate to him a proof, and most printers 
who care, have fine collections of signed proofs, with often most interesting personal 
records by the artist and printer written on them. But it is a very different matter, 
when, after that printer’s death, or his abandonment of business, in a burst of conscien- 
tious generosity, a whole mass of artists’ prints, sometimes unsigned, appear. In this 
case the artist should seize them. If they are signed, and this has happened, and the 
artist can detect his forged signature, he should destroy them. But the moral is, the 
etcher should print his own plates. The master printers are mostly honest, but 
strange things have been known to happen when the artist leaves his plates about 
printing offices. I cannot repeat too often, as Whistler said, ‘‘the man who stands 
beside the printing press has a chance to make a very good collection.” 

Some most excellent printers have played most extraordinary games. There wasone, 
who, when he had pulled a proof, with the etcher standing beside him, would look at it, 
groan, crush it, and twist it in his hands, and with a sigh throw it in the waste paper 
box. It was months after that the artist in a print shop came across his finest proof, 
which had been carefully flattened and pressed, and he was invited to sign it; sometimes 
he did, and sometimes he seized it. But that printer is no more. 

Solander cases, tight fitting cases, are the best for preserving prints. The mounts 
must therefore be uniform—and there are museum sizes—but rarely do two museums 
keep to the same size. A little elementary interchange of brains on this subject amongst 
curators would be a good thing. But if the artist or collector will have his prints all 
put in the same sized mounts, and all upright in these mounts, as I have said, he will save 
himself much trouble and big frame bills, and can look at his collection with pleasure, or 
send it easily to an exhibition. 

The cases also should be kept in chests of drawers, each drawer labelled with its 


304 


OF THE PRESERVATION OF PRINTS 


contents, and a catalogue made. Or the prints may be kept in these shallow drawers 
in brown paper covers with the titles written on them. These or the cases should only 
be taken out one at a time, looked at and then put away. I state all these rules, but, 
save in the case of uniform mounting, I am afraid I practise little of my preaching, and 
waste hours in consequence, putting things to rights after my prints have been looked 
over. Still, the methods I suggest are the right ones. 

The framing of etchings is also an art, and etchers have no knowledge of the subject 
mostly, any more than of mounting. White enamelled, or a creamy white, wood is best. 
Whistler used to paint over the white enamel straight narrow parallel lines in rose, 
purple, or blue, sometimes, but rarely, adding a butterfly. Now the advantage and the 
use and the beauty of the scheme is this: if the frames are all of the same size,—as his 
were and mine are—if hung in a private house they look uniform and quiet; in a public 
exhibition the hangers can hang them in a group; and not only this: being hung in a 
group they attract attention and prove that the artist had some idea not only of making 
people look at his work, but of decoration. 

The average etcher frames his prints in any old thing of any size that is kicking 
round the studio; it is therefore impossible to make a group; that is, however, the last 
thing the average hanger thinks of. 

Some prints look best in dull black. The gorgeous frames of the average print are 
a cloak for the bad work within them. 

And if the Committee of an Exhibition makes any suggestion, it is to use narrow 
mounts and frames in natural wood—the most unnatural, inartistic, and vulgar method, 
their only ideal is to stick as much as possible on the wall, when, as everyone knows, a 
foot of good white mount in a decent frame thoughtfully and spaciously hung is worth 
a yard of bad etching badly mounted, badly framed, badly hung; but the latter is the 
respectable business method of the respectable commercial etcher. 

In the Salon and Royal Academy gold frames are required, but no one visits those 
sepulchres to see good etching. The right rule is to frame prints uniformly in a way that 
displays them.—The way I have described. | 


395 






i 


‘HE ARRANGEMENT 
PRINT ROOM ~ 






a 





OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM CHAPTER XL 


HERE is as much art in presenting a work of art as there is in producing it. 

And there are as few people capable of showing a work of art as of making it. 

Yet the world contains more galleries than one can see to-day, and more 

bad results in selection and arrangement are displayed on the walls than ever 
before in the arrangement of a Print Room. 

To-day every town must have a gallery—and every gallery its print room. 
And these must be made and furnished while you wait. There must be Raphaels, 
Friths, Titians, Bouguereaus, Lippo Lippis, Hobbemas, Michael Angelos, Rembrandts, 
Turners, Marises, Corots—to say nothing of the local home-made genius and Whistler— 
and the directors get them while they wait—and they don’t have to wait long—and 
the print rooms are made up in the same fashion. 

The public gallery is the outcome of the private collection. Often it remains in the 
original rooms, never intended for the exhibition of works of art at all. The collector 
of the works frequently knew nothing of art, but he knew what he liked ; he knew nothing 
of hanging and arrangement, but he knew just how and where he wanted his collection 
placed and proper presentment had nothing to do with it. The present-day collector 
and hanger follows tradition in this matter, as the wayfarer and tourist may see, no 
matter how fast he hurries through a collection armed with Baedeker and Berenson to 
do his thinking and seeing for him. Though galleries are the “‘grave-yards of dead art”’ 
there is no reason why they should be sad, dreary, tiresome, pompous, gaudy, pretentious 
—but of a certainty they are—and from most modern Print Rooms, Galleries, and Ex- 
hibitions one comes away tired, bored, fatigued; even the most hardened of us, now that 
art is upon the world—or was—but in time of war a little brains would enable us to pre- 
pare for peace even in the arrangement of galleries if anything is left of any of them. 
Most of the European Galleries too are cursed with legacies and the American millionnaire 
also has descended on ours. In Europe now the Galleries only accept what they want. 
Here the collector or owner threatens, demands, and dumps. 

Can this all be changed? Guide Books, artless but artful authorities, perambu- 
lating lecturers, circulating shows, students and hacks making messes of masterpieces, 
competitions for the best picture of the year, the judgment of babes and sucklings, will 
not do it—nor most of the other methods of dragging people to galleries. But the proper 
lighting, arrangement and hanging of the rooms will make them bright, attractive, and 
gay, will make visitors come to Exhibitions in them, temporary or permanent, and when 
they come, look at the works shown with pleasure, instead of wandering aimlessly or 
conductedly about—a duty tobe done. Iam referring to all sorts of Exhibitions. There 
are any number of ways of arranging art shows—there is only one right way. We all 
know the academic method, and artists who are mostly artless and cowards or toadies 
are responsible for it. As many works as possible are accepted, and the walls are papered 
with them from floor to ceiling, the hanging committee saying they must hang every- 
thing selected, and the selecting committee accepting everything they can. This idea 
of two committees to do the work of one is ridiculous—if mainly American; the only 


399 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


workable committee is composed of three artists, a painter, sculptor and graver; and if 
two of these should fall ill, the result will be far better. No collectors with taste, patrons 
with cash, or curators with unpractical ideas should be allowed to select or hang, but 
the entire management should be in the hands of a committee of artists, preferably ex- 
hibitors. The average curator follows the academic method, forgetting his cellars and 
garrets, where certain of his treasures—and most of the things sent in—should repose. 

As for the collector when he starts hanging there is no stopping him. I have known 
some who have not only covered their walls, but their doors, others who use bath-tubs 
and dark entries, and of one his housekeeper said, “‘I know in which bureau drawer the 
new Crivelli is, but I don’t know where his old shirts are now.” 

Another method is to select a work owned by an important collector or popular 
painter, especially if on the committee, give it the place of honour, and surround it with 
the worst rubbish accepted. The picture in the place of honour will look quite well 
sometimes; the owner or painter is delighted, and so are all those hung near it—till 
they find out that they would not have been hung otherwise. 

There are many more schemes but they all have had one result, the formation for 
reform, of independent societies and secessions managed by artists for artists. These 
frequently have gone to the other extreme, and the results are evident all over the con- 
tinent of Europe, though they have culminated in Austria where one frequently has to 
hunt for the art amid the riot of architecture and decoration. 

I do not propose to say anything either about Arts and Crafts Exhibitions—in 
Germany and Austria they were well arranged at times—the endeavour being made to 
show the exhibits as they will appear in the places they are intended for. In England 
these shows are hung like a bargain sale, or else so elaborately that it takes endless time 
and money toarrange them. ‘They please their customers—they are nothing but shops— 
but few artists, and to be a decorator one must be an artist, though this was never under- 
stood by William Morris and is unknown to most of his successors. The French have 
lost all sense of decoration and arrangement, though the British Decorative Art Exhibition 
in Paris, 1914, arranged by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, was wonderfully 
well done—a model both to the French and British. 

To make a proper exhibition of art there must be a proper gallery, a building, rooms, 
or a room built to show works of art in and not to show off the cleverness of architects and 
decorators or the costumes of the visitors. The spectator should think of nothing but 
the exhibits when in the gallery, only see the works on the walls; there should be no evi- 
dence how they were shown—they should just be seen. 

Very few such galleries have been built; frequently an accidental or unintentional 
building is better and answers the requirements perfectly. The best galleries I have 
ever seen were built up inside a skating rink. I do not advocate skating rinks, but this 
was an occasion on which “art happened,” and so did the rink, and it happened under 
the direction of Whistler, who is entirely responsible for the proper arrangement and 
hanging of modern exhibitions, though this fact is not known. Yet much that is 
improper in their arrangement is improperly attributed to him. 


310 


OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM 


The question of lighting is most important of all. 

Whether the roof—skylight—is flat, curved, or peaked does not so much matter, 
save structurally. What is wanted is that a flat tone of light should fall on the flat 
wall just where and when it is wanted, and nowhere else. That the light should be 
uniform—unbroken—not cut up by reflections or shadows from girders or corners. 

Where the light is wanted is alone on the walls of the room, where the works are 
to beshown. Ifthe gallery is devoted to sculpture the light should be as near as possible 
that without the gallery, the light of nature. The skylights should either be of plain 
glass or whitish glass. I have seen the most fierce and weird effects with tinted glass 
made by an ingenious architect with decorative ideas, or with the shadows of girders— 
by one who had no ideas—or brains. 

What I have now to say concerns the exhibition of prints, but the statements refer 
to the proper showing of paintings as well, though most painters do not believe it. 

Let us say the roof of the gallery—the skylight—is flat. There must be a piece of 
ceiling, whether flat or curved does not matter—all round it, which must extend out so 
far as to cast a shadow, or rather prevent any light falling on the wall above a definitely 
chosen fixed line, higher than which no work may extend. The position of this line of 
shadow, and the width of the ceiling which makes it, must be ascertained in this way. 
The line of dado—picture rail—line space—must be first fixed—for prints higher than for 
paintings—then prints tried on the walls—never more than two placed one above the 
other—at such a height and so spaced that the spectator, at the proper distance, can look 
at them restfully without stooping or standing on tiptoe. When this top line is found, 
the ceiling must be made to extend so far into the room that the shadow will meet it. 
Trials can be made with a bit of canvas. It must be evident, though the matter is scarce 
ever considered, that if above the prints there is a vast space of brightly lighted and 
usually gaudily painted wall, that and not the prints or drawings will be the first thing 
to catch the eye, belittle the prints and worry the spectator. The Turner Rooms in 
the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery) are a lamentable example of this. 
You cannot get the gaudy glitter of the overpowering, empty, useless wall space above 
the works out of your eyes. This was passed by a painter director. And in the 
Vienna Gallery everything, even the decorations of Munkacsy, is killed. In the new 
British Museum Print Exhibition Gallery large labels glare at you, and kill the 
prints under them—those which are not killed by huge shadow boxes. 

The width of this piece of ceiling must vary in different rooms, or they must be built 
of varying height, with a definite idea that different sized as well as different sorts of 
works are to be shown in them. The height of the wall however is most important, a 
gallery which is too low is as bad as one too high. In the Leipzig, 1914, Exhibition all 
the rooms were too low, and I felt as though I was going to bump my head all the time, 
except in the very lowest, which I had something to do with arranging, and there did not, 
for the roof could not be seen, we put up a Velarium, and the Velarium makes the 
exhibition and will be described. 

In the rooms in which paintings alone are to be shown, the shadow ceiling line must 


air 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


be fixed six or eight feet above the dado at least, as the paintings can of course be allowed 
to run far higher up the walls than prints. In print rooms far more careful experiments 
must be made. But as I have said, only space for two “landscape shaped”’ prints one 
above the other should be allowed and one upright—unless they are very small. The 
space on which the prints are to be shown should not exceed sixty inches between the dado 
and the upper line of shadow, and as I will explain it is a good thing to have a definite 
change of colour as well as a shadow above. Just within this shadow there should be 
a flat moulding strong enough to hang prints from, but this should be removable as it 
may have to be shifted a few inches up or down; in fact a chalk line can be made around 
the walls and the moulding put up after the prints are hung, only very heavy ones being 
hung from it. A piece of tape placed all round the room produces an excellent effect— 
tying the prints together. In the new British Museum Print Rooms and at the Grolier 
Club prints are shown in glazed cases on the wall. The cramped effect obtained and 
the shadows are horrible, and as the cases are divided it is most difficult to arrange 
the prints. Most print exhibitions are either hung from the bottom line, that is, 
lower edge of the frames is made of the same height from the dado. This is the 
painter’s way; or a middle line is chosen which is level and the prints are arrayed 
in a jagged saw edge above and below it. This is the print room fashion. But 
the only right way is to commence from the top, make the top line level all 
round the room and hang down from it. As to the actual hanging, unless the work 
is preposterously large, when it is usually preposterously bad, and can be re- 
jected, it can be hung by screw eyes and hooks from the walls. This is the simplest, 
quickest, and most practical method. In hanging the British Section at the Leipzig 
Exhibition, the screws were all placed in the frames before they left London. As soon 
as their places were settled on the wall, in Leipzig, the screw eyes were chalked, the 
hooks driven in on the chalk marks and the work was done. And there was no evi- 
dence of how the drawings and prints were fastened to the wall. The Austrians, in the 
same Exhibition, made one huge frame all round the room in black wood, covered the 
walls with gold canvas and killed the prints utterly. And not only this, the roof sprang 
a leak, and the immaculate and undivided frame had to be hacked to pieces to get the 
prints down; in the English Section they were lifted down without trouble and rehung 
as easily. German and French prints were screwed or nailed up and glittering pieces 
of metal hit you in the eye. The best way of all is to have a double ended nail, with a 
punch, one end is driven into the frame, the other into the wall; there is no measuring, 
chalking, or loafing, the work is done in a minute. 

Two other matters to be carefully considered in building, especially in print rooms, 
are corners and doors. Now no matter how carefully the system of lighting is worked 
out, shadows will creep into the corners; there will be a lower tone on one wall than the 
other which it joins; there will be waste space or crowding caused by the corners. What 
is the remedy? Don’t have corners—cut them off—and make the room into an octagon 
and put the doors in the corners. This is the solution, and it has been most excellently 
carried out in the Scottish Academy at Edinburgh. The consequence is all the long 


Sie 


OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM 


wall spaces are unbroken and there are no corners, for the octagonal system is carried 
out all around in those spaces where there are no doors. Small groups of works 
may be most effectively arranged on the piece which joins the two side walls or sculpture 
may be placed in these spaces. 

I have spoken of the roof and corners and doors first ; they are most important, they 
are up anyway before the walls are ready to hang the works on. The space on which 
the works are to be hung must be of wood, into which at any point the hangers may be 
able to drive nails and screws. ‘This is for prints of course. No framework, shadow or 
glass boxes, steel sliding bars, battens or other ingenious abominations should be tol- 
erated, for they are intolerable, but the simplest, cheapest woodwork which, when it is 
riddled with nail holes, can easily be taken down, should be the material on which the prints 
are hung. The rest of the gallery may be of lapis lazuli, gold and frankincense if you 
like—I should save the money to buy prints—but the space where the prints hang 
should be soft wood. I am told by the Director of the Edinburgh College of Art that 
he is now using that thin wood, in his Exhibition Rooms, which comes from Norway in 
rolls, for hanging on, as it costs next to nothing, can be put up easily like paper, coloured 
as he wants and pulled down, cut up and used by his pupils to paint on if he does not like 
it or wants a change. 

Owing to this carelessness and artlessness on the part of so-called artists in framing, 
it is often almost impossible to make a decent group of their works—quite impossible, if 
they cannot be fastened to any part of the wall space without thought of battens or 
wires. The average hanger, however, never thinks of such things; he hangs as much 
as he can jam on the walls and that is the end of it. I once in Venice had to hire 
carpenters to build a wall while the hangers waited, as the background was concrete. 

And there is a new gallery in America with concrete walls where everything must 
be hung on wires. 

Having then got the walls, and the ceiling, corners, and dado right the walls must 
now be covered. 

As to the wall coverings on which the works are to be shown, the wealth of a gallery 
is usually gauged by its gorgeousness. I know of one in London where the decorations 
are so precious that nothing may be driven in them; consequently the whole place is 
disfigured by hanging masses of wires, and it takes ten times as long to hang. And 
people are easily bored by the same gaudiness, gorgeousness, and glitter and demand 
something more gaudy, gorgeous, glittering. A gallery is not like a hotel with new 
guests to be overpowered by old splendour, but virtually the same people visit the gallery 
over and over and they want a new sensation. Not that it should be sensational but a 
change. This is also felt by all artists. It is awful to have to hang the same old marble- 
mounted, nail-pierced red or green draped walls year after year, I know, for I have had 
to do it. It never seems to occur to most gallery directors that a change would be ad- 
visable, till it is absolutely necessary, through time and use to substitute new gorgeousness 
for old ; nor does it ever occur to them that each show, each room in it, demands a different 
background, different hangings. The Directors sweep the walls, wash the floors and tell 


aS) 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


the artists that is all they can afford—take the gallery or leave it. They even remove the 
dust which gives character and colour to the wall hangings. And it never occurs to 
them that the walls can be covered at little more expense with new stuff, in a different 
fashion, than it costs to clean them. 

For prints and drawings there is nothing like a white or ivory wall for hanging on. 
Nor for hanging colour on either, but painters funk it, forgetting that there is rarely 
any white in their work but always red or green to be overcome, which will kill the 
works hung, while a gold wall may and sometimes does wipe out the frame, just as it 
sometimes helps black and white. The stuff that is wanted is white muslin or cheese 
cloth of the cheapest sort. The background behind it may be red or yellow or black, and 
the tone will come through and bind the room together. 

Now it is generally admitted that the dado should be dark—but it is rarely made 
black—of a blue or green black, and the floor darker, the hanging space white 
and above that the walls and ceilings dark again. It sounds funereal but it is glit- 
tering, as all the light is concentrated on the exhibits. Round all the hanging 
space run a quarter-inch triangular gold fillet, and you will have the delightfullest col- 
oured gallery you have ever seen, when it is finished. (This I did in the Anglo-American 
Exhibition, London, 1914.) All this sounds perfectly easy and simple and fool-proof— 
but itis not. In the Ghent International Exhibition, 1913, France started out to make a 
hit, and put up a bonnet-box wall-paper in some rooms, and in others a canary yellow 
background that swallowed up all the gold frames and yellow paint in the pictures. 
Such an artless combination never was seen. The only decorated gallery at the Graphic 
Arts Section of the Leipzig, 1914, which was, besides the Austrian, thought out and then 
carried out was the British, which was designed by Mr. Morley Fletcher and myself on 
the invitation of the British Government, an invitation I accepted as there was no official 
American Section, in the most interesting exhibition of the Graphic arts ever held. 

The scheme was grey and green, very light grey walls—I could not get them white— 
darker dado and space above, grey-black mouldings, all distemper put on with a 
whitewash brush, and we wanted black floor matting but did not get it. Still, it was 
the quietest, most restful, and most concentrated group of galleries in the Exhibition and 
we had exactly the same men, colours, and stuffs to work with as the other nations. A 
British architect and decorator near ruined the place with his furniture, however. 

The stuffs were the cheapest, the colour distemper and the floors matting—the 
German carpenters, painters and decorators the cleverest and most intelligent I 
have ever seen, and I have had experiences almost everywhere in hanging large 
exhibitions. | 

One other matter is the angle or slope at which the prints are hung. They must 
slant forward, or there will be reflections in the glasses. ‘This by ordinary methods of 
hanging cannot be done, but the nails or screws high up in the back do it automatically. 

But there is nothing scarcely in what I have written that is not already known, if 
not practised. Where is the new thing? Even it is not new, but it is not used—in pic- 
ture galleries—it is the invention of the Greeks and Romans, and The Velarium, after 


314 





OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM 


the works on the walls, is the most important part of the gallery, and it is unused—and 
unknown. 

The few artists who care, always try to get a quiet concentrated light, but they do 
not know how to get it. Architects know nothing about it. But a few times has it 
been got, then only by Whistler; and when imitated always wrongly. 

The Velarium is a screen of the same stuff—or of the same colour—the stuff may 
have to be a little thinner or denser—the colour too a little lighter or darker—as the wall 
covering, which is cut out of this material of the size of the skylight—about—and hung, 
a foot or so, below it. A screen is often placed below the skylight at times, usually right 
against it, stretching all across the gallery; it then has exactly the effect of movable 
shades, which are also used. But the method of Whistler is quite different. The 
screen is bounded either by a cord, sewn in its edges all round, or by a light bamboo or 
thin strip of wood, ora wire. To this edge is also sewn a valance of the same material 
as the wall covering which hangs down a foot or so, and removes the hard sharp edges 
and angles, and tones in with the wall. The cords with which it is hung should work in 
pulleys or be adjustable, so that the velarium may be raised and lowered. All artificial 
lights too must be arranged above the velarium and so be hidden. 

It is used for one purpose only, to concentrate the light on the works on the walls. 
The hangers should, once it is ready, take their place under it and have it raised up till 
the shadow it casts falls just below, or rather commences just at the bottom of the lowest 
picture frame, or maybe the dado, while the shadow above is cast from the ceiling just 
above the top line of prints. It will thus be seen that the entire gallery, save the space 
of wall where the works are hung, is in shadow. They alone are in light, and this is 
perfect lighting. The cords must be adjustable, so that with the changing sunlight of 
the seasons it may be raised or lowered,—then the shadows are always the same. All 
artificial lights must be above the velarium under the skylight—and they must also be 
arranged to raise and lower—they should be at the corners, otherwise they will cast 
spots, if the stuff is thin, on the floor. The shadows will not be strong on the wall : 
they commence gradually ; but the actual size of the velarium, whether slightly larger or 
smaller than the skylight, can only be determined by experiment. It may be too that 
there will have to be a second screen around and outside it, to further concentrate the 
light. But what is wanted is that the light falls on the prints alone. Of course nothing 
can be shown in the centre of the gallery, though on one occasion I cut a hole in the 
centre of the velarium, and placed Rodin’s Main de Dieu under it; that looked splendidly, 
but the walls were ruined. Ladies do not like the velarium, as it is not adapted to show 
off their gowns. Still, one would think people went to galleries to look at pictures, but 
it is not so—they go to gossip, see each other, drink tea, and endure music'—the pict- 
ures are an unfortunate necessity. If you put up a velarium they must look at the 
pictures only—it makes them look, for they see nothing else. The only place where you 
can see a velarium nowadays is in the summer time, in the streets of Southern France 


1T do not object to tea or music and advocate a café, a real one, but these attractions which 
increase receipts must be in separate rooms not among the prints. 


315 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


and Spain—the velarium of the Sierpes of Seville is wonderful, but you never see it in 
the gallery of that city. 

The spectators do look at the pictures in such a gallery as I have described and 
nothing else—they do not understand why—all they think of are the works on the walls. 
The velarium even makes them quiet, but they come out saying how fine, how charm- 
ing the show was. A proof of this was in the London Memorial Whistler Exhibition, 
hung in this way, the Paris Memorial Show hung any way,—virtually the same pictures 
—certainly nearly all the most important—were shown in both. Of the first Jacques 
Blanche said the London Exhibition gave the impression that Whistler was a great 
artist who occasionally made a mistake, while the Paris show made him look a very 
insignificant person who once in a while did a fine thing. It was all due to the hanging 
and lighting, and bad hanging and lighting can kill any artist’s work. 

Another method of concentration is to cover each door with a double hanging of 
the colour of the dado—it cuts off false lights and prevents people staring into other 
rooms. 

Under no circumstances should screens or cases be allowed in a gallery—they 
ruin it. 

As to the hanging, the fewest works should be hung and they should be so disposed 
as to be seen to the best advantage. In the case of prints and drawings, the intelligent 
director—or committee of artists—who should never be painters only—should invite 
the artist, if it is an invited exhibition, to send a definite number of works, they having 
first—as they usually do not—worked out the amount of line space at their disposal 
for each artist. ‘The number of works hung should always be an even one, as in a gallery 
arranged as I have pointed out: if the number of exhibits by each artist is an even one, 
they can be hung in two lines or grouped, or made into groups; and still more easily can 
this be done if the artist has the brains to make his frames uniform. Whistler only 
had one sized frame for all his prints—the mounts of each alone differed. I have two, 
one for large lithographs, the other for etchings, and all the etchings are framed as up- 
rights. These details—never considered—are of the utmost importance, not only to 
artists for the better showing of their works, but the hangers for ease in hanging them— 
in finding places for them—and to curators not supported by state funds. So far as I 
know no Japanese-European expert has ever pointed out that there are standard sizes 
in Japanese prints—about the only merit in the majority of them. Again and again I 
have known good works to be thrown out and inferior ones hung, because the good ones 
were unequally framed and no group of them could be made. The design of each 
artist’s frames should be uniform and the colour the same in all his exhibits. The 
mounts may differ in colour, but this should be as little as possible. Or the artist may 
be given a definite space to fill, he being told the length of the line space and the height 
his works may extend to. Between each artist’s group there should be a break—say 
the works of a group are an inch apart, there should be at least three inches between that 
group and the next. It is unfair and unjust to an artist to be asked to send only one 
or two prints to an exhibition, as is the general rule—the fixed rule in Salons and the 

316 





OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF A PRINT ROOM 


Academies. It is unjust to the artist and unfair to his reputation. The etcher or en- 
graver, if his work is worth showing at all, should have as much space allotted him as the 
oil painter, and the gallery in which his works are hung should adjoin that of the paint- 
ings—not be in a basement or upstairs, as is too often the case. By drawing and en- 
graving to-day the greatest artists are expressing themselves in a way which will last. 
But in most shows they are treated as inferiors by men who are incapable of producing 
either drawings or engravings of merit. In fact I believe in hanging prints with paint- 
ings as they are hung in a private house. 

The arrangement of a print show presents many difficulties, the works having been 
sent in, judged, and all that possibly can be, rejected, always, however, remembering 
the group. The hanging committee, which, as I have said, should also be the selecting 
committee, should arrange them on the floor in front of the space it is proposed they 
should occupy. It will then usually be found that they will have to be changed several 
times before they are right—or will look right on the walls, and even after they are up 
they most likely have to be rearranged. Meanwhile the workmen can be putting in 
the screw eyes on the backs of frames, on which they are to hang. The time that is 
wasted otherwise is enormous. Having the two definite lines top and bottom to 
go by, the hangers should take the height of the tallest frame, and put everything else 
up to the same height in the room. This is scarcely ever done, but either a middle line 
or, easiest of all, the bottom line is chosen, and the works straggle in a most offensive 
and undecorative manner all round the room. By my scheme there is a uniform decora- 
tive line made round the entire room. I have never seen anything so badly arranged 
as was the Leipzig Exhibition, the first great show of black and white. Every one had 
something in one of the fifty rooms, and in most there were more than fifty artists. Had 
one hundred—if they could have been found—distinguished artists been asked to con- 
tribute the exhibition would not only have been more interesting but more important. 

Between certain groups of prints, water colours and pastels should be hung—in 
groups also; this gives variety, and increases the spectator’s interest, while the effect 
of a gallery is brightened. Small sculpture may also be introduced between the groups. 
And I am in favour of and have hung galleries containing works in all mediums—includ- 
ing oils. Why should onenot make a public gallery as delightful as a private room? Only 
the stupidity and jealousy of painters and sculptors prevents it. In each group too the 
greatest care in arrangement and balance should be exercised. Over and over one 
has seen a charming young lady—in a framed print—gazing longingly, not at a hand- 
some young man in a near frame but into a corner, while he turns his back on her. 
Common sense, one would have thought, would have made the hangers reverse things— 
they probably left the hanging to the workmen, or were too busy discussing futurism or 
football or the workmen their union to attend to business. A tenth of an inch up or down 
in one print will knock a whole wall out. And no chalked or plumbed or spirit-levelled 
same-height-stick game will make a fine wall. The artist hanger’s eye alone will do it. 

In those antiquated monstrosities, Academies and Salons (no, this is not envy) 
a rule is usually in force that only gold frames may be used. Let the artist use the frames 


ot7 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


he likes, so long as they are of the same size and design. If one wishes to see how hor- 
ribly and artlessly water colours and prints can be hung by using uniformly coloured 
frames—and by frames without uniformity—go to the Old Water Colour and the 
Painter Etchers Societies’ Exhibitions in London, or the Salons in Paris, and there are 
shows of the same sort in America. 

To see prints well hung once one could go to the International Society in London. 
Alas, no longer. The best recent hanging I have seen was in the Austrian and German 
Pavilions in the Roman 1910 International Exhibition. The Panama Pacific Exposition 
San Francisco—save my room—was a nightmare; even the painters hung theirs anew 
when they saw it. 

I have lately seen in practical use in the Camera Club of London, the simplest 
and best system of hanging yet invented. 

The print is laid face downward on the floor and two double ended steel pins are 
driven into it, with an open ended punch; the print is then offered up—the background 
may be of any material, but wood is best—and when it is level and of the required height 
a slight blow with the hand on the face of the frame over the pin drives it completely and 
securely and immediately into the wall—the pin going in the full length. To remove 
the print it is only necessary to pull it straight away from the wall. This is by far the 
simplest and securest method of hanging I have ever seen. One man hung unaided in a 
recent exhibition of the Senefelder Club fifty frames—fixing the pins and everything in 
a morning. ‘The pins are used in looms, and are only made by Messrs. Hattay Brothers — 
of Dundee, Scotland. They are called Hattay Pins. 

The system of building or arrangement, decoration and hanging of galleries I have © 
described is simple, cheap, and rapid ; it however requires brains and courage and knowl- 
edge to practise. When it is successfully done the result is fascinating, decorative, rest- 
ful. And the result is a work of art, for there is no evidence of the means by which it 
was produced. 

The print curator of the Metropolitan Museum has completely lost his temper over 
this book—maybe it is because his new print gallery walls are concrete—or some sort 
of stuff into which no nails can be driven and he instead of covering them with wood 
as I suggest has drilled holes in them and put up a rail to hang his prints from; his stupidity 
equals the architects—and the same firm did the same thing at the American Academy 
of Arts and Letters—but standardized idiocy is the aim of most architects in these mat- 
ters today—and the directors of galleries too know no better and accept the bungling 
given them. 


318 








OF CATALOGUING CHAPTER XLI 


HE fashion or fad of cataloguing an etcher’s work has of late years increased 

and multiplied enormously ; it is as catching as the hunt for decorations, and 

is indulged in by the same kind of people. The artist is probably not decorated 

but his cataloguer is, but as Monet once said, ‘“‘the only decorated people are 
those who are not decorated.” 

A catalogue properly made is an invaluable record of an artist’s work, provided his 
work is worth recording and cataloguing. But starting in a modest and reliable fashion 
by recording facts for the use of dealers, students, collectors, and curators, of late it has 
become a medium for hacks and compilers to display their ignorance of what they are 
writing about, and for dealers to lean on; especially are the introductions to some of 
these complicated compilations amazing. 

The idea originated with Rovinsky’s catalogue of Rembrandt, and has reached its 
climax in the Grolier Club’s portfolios. ‘The result of this catalogue mania is that every 
little etcher has a big catalogue made by a compiler, illustrated with all, if possible, the 
etcher’s productions. These being manufactured in limited editions are quickly ac- 
quired and sometimes the catalogue brings a higher price than the etchings which are 
described in it. Such is fame or fate. The language in which the descriptions are 
written is usually unintelligible, worthless, as a description. Nothing is so difficult 
as to describe prints simply, but the average catalogue maker thinks more of himself 
and his language than of his subject. 

The following are all from catalogues of Whistler’s works, taken at random. 


194. Nocturne Shipping. 

Several ships in middle distance and toward the horizon. 
195. Old Women. 

Gossips before their doors in Venice. 
196. Alderney Street. 

Looking partly along and across Alderney Street in Pimlico. 


Fancy the puzzled collector or infuriated dealer trying to identify his proofs from 
such inconsequent rubbish. Yet these manufacturers of significant rubbish are beaten 
by the following: 


10. Return of the Fishing Boats. 
A stretch of water with a number of fishing boats in the distance. Wonderful quality of 
surface on the water. In the foreground some men are standing on the shore waiting for 
the boats. Butterfly monogram in lower right-hand corner. 


26. At Sea. 
A long deck of ship passengers leaning over rail looking intently at the sea. Wonderful 
effect expressed in a few lines. Butterfly monogram upper right corner. 
34. Street, Corsica. 
A busy scene, many figures coming and going along a rather broad street. Buildings of 
some height and consequence on either side of the street, view in distance. Butterfly 
monogram in left corner. 


Rye 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


In the first whether the subjects are signed or not is not stated; in neither is the 
size given. 

Anyone who could identify any of the works from such descriptions would be a 
genius, anyone who would write such rubbish is incredible. Yet one catalogue was 
issued by a dealer, the other by a collector, one was written by a critic, the other by a 
curator. ‘This is the sort of trash the amateur is fed on. 

Even the best catalogues are only useful for reference. As Whistler said, “It is the 
business of the cataloguer to describe not to comment.”’ On the other hand if the artist 
made his own catalogue, he might make it as interesting as the works described ; however, 
everything is done for the poor, but unfortunately necessary, artist; before long some 
mechanical toy will make etchings just as well as he can—at least the world will think so, 
a world which prefers canned music and movies to the real things. 

The cataloguer states that his business is merely to catalogue, but everybody knows 
the most interesting and reliable catalogues are those which describe, explain, elucidate, 
and the man to make the catalogue of an artist’s work is the artist himself assisted by a 
clerk and a foot rule. 

As I have pointed out, states are often all wrong, dry point generally all wrong, half 
inked early proofs described as late pulls and so on and so on. This is the way of cata- 
loguers who are mainly most superior persons. Too superior ever to be conscious how 
inferior they are. In fact, to sum up. Howard Mansfield’s description of a cataloguer 
may be quoted: ‘The value of a catalogue should be in the fulness and accuracy of its 
facts, and not in the personal opinions of the compiler, which if thought worthy of expres- 
sion should be expressed elsewhere and not forced on print lovers seeking information, 
who are apt to have opinions of their own.” And these “opinions” of Mr. Mansfield 
contain errors as well as truths. There is no reason why a catalogue should not be as 
interesting as a biography, as concise as a dictionary, so authoritative as to be final. 
Still Mr. Mansfield’s catalogue of Whistler’s etchings, published by the Caxton Club of 
Chicago, is far the best yet issued, for he describes completely and concisely every 
plate and state he could find. 


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OF TEACHING ETCHING CHAPTER XLII 


S I said in the Preface to this edition, the most important happening to 
me is the starting of my school of Etching and Lithography at the Art 
Students’ League, New York. I have always believed with Whistler that 
any one can be taught to draw and to paint—by a master painter—not by a 
modern teacher—but God alone can make him an artist, and with William Morris that 
all students should be taught a craft—if only to make a living for themselves. But 
these, the hard roads for the plodding, are the last things that are taught in America. 

Everything here is standardized in art, academies, schools, professors, exhibitions, 
cubism, expressionism, dynamic symmetry, short cuts for the incompetent, are all sterilized 
and hypnotized artlessness—and whether a student imitates a cubistic compiler, or 
snow storm manufacturer—each sort is produced with its own kind of stencil. Also 
the students are supposed to be taught drawing; they are taught in most schools, from 
the materials they use to the drawings made with them, to do just as the teacher does. 
The teaching of drawing at the League under Bridgman and DuMond is, however, very 
good and very different. 

Now it will be said that imitation of the master’s methods was the method of the old 
masters. It wasnot. The pupils were the master’s assistants trained by him to work as 
he worked and to help him; when they had mastered their craft, and had something to 
say for themselves, they left him properly trained and, setting up a shop of their own, 
said what they wanted to say in their own way. If they had nothing to say for themselves 
they went on helping the master till he had no further use for them, or he or they disap- 
peared. To-day the pupils in most cases do not work with masters or not as assistants, 
they do not aid the master, he may come round once a week and criticise their work and 
tell them where they are wrong, he does not show them how to get right, how to do prac- 
tical work. The master is too often an out-of-work unsuccessful artist with no ideas of his 
own, no practice of his own, no ability of his own, who only pretends to teach what he 
cannot practice and only does it because he cannot make a living otherwise. The students 
follow him for years till at last it dawns upon them that he is leading them nowhere, and 
then most of them, cursing him and art, quit a profession they usually were unfitted for 
in the beginning, or, if they might have done something, find themselves lost in a desert 
with occasional lounges to loaf in, libraries to steal from, lectures to attend, but especially 
balls, the end of most art schools—and still students, unless they kill themselves by mar- 
riage. This last has almost ruined my classes. They all think that once they have a 
small smattering of drawing and a glimmer of oil paint—they are made. They hate all 
other forms of art save a little sculpture—though they hope for a fortune from commercial 
art, posters and comics—America’s ideals of art. Their designs prove they were brought 
up on the comics—they are pure vulgarians. Look at the human types to-day—we are 
approaching the comics. We hate the arts and crafts, not only the students but the 
masters. This was proved this year when the National Academy of Design, by a secret 
vote of which the membership was not informed, excluded all engravings and drawings 
from their exhibition. Architecture is no longer shown in the Academy exhibitions. Thus 


325 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


two classes of their members were unrepresented on the oil painted walls—while water 
colours have no footing at all in the National Academy of Design. The excuse made 
was, there were so few engraver members, that it was not fair to exclude the hundreds 
of oil painters for the engraver’s benefit—when as a matter of fact—and the Academy 
authorities knew it—they were not excluding the members, whom by the constitution 
they could not exclude, but the artist engravers of America—to hang the unsalable works 
of unsuccessful oil painters—such is American art and American business and American 
publicity to-day. A proof also, that the painter hates prints. All this happened in the 
Fine Arts Building in which both the Academy and the Art Students’ League are housed 
and is worth remembering as a proof that not only does the American public hate art, but 
the American artist does too. 

As to practical school work, there has been something of interest done though how 
well it has been done—or if anything really has been accomplished—it is too soon to say; 

that is, in the teaching of etching and by me. 

| Two years ago I was asked to take charge of the Etching Class at the Art Students’ 
League of New York which had been in operation for many years, but only, like that at 
the National Academy of Design, as a side show, and run in a half-hearted manner. I 
was glad, for though I had been lecturing at the Academy—as at the Slade School, 
London—for several years, I found it impossible to arouse here any interest in the stu- 
dents, mostly foreigners out for cash, or to forget their native art—when I gave them 
lantern slides; or Americans out for short cuts, fresh from correspondence schools and 
colleges, ignorant of everything, highly educated in the last new things on the town, 
though of actual education they had none. But the offer from the League gave me a 
chance to see if I could practise what I had been preaching for years, that the Graphic 
Arts could be taught. I accepted the post but found that the school room was bare— 
and the school authorities blank—on the subject. I went to Europe at once and saw 
first the excellently arranged school conducted by Sir Frank Short at the Royal College 
of Art, in London, far the best equipped in England, and the London County Council 
Central School. And I then went to the Leipzig School again and found it under the same 
management in the engraving and etching departments, doing even more—and more 
interesting work than before. Then to Berlin with the intention of seeing Prof. Emil 
Orlik’s school in the Arts and Crafts Academy, but it was closed. However, Prof. Orlik 
passed the winter of 1923-1924 here and we have, in and out of my school, talked and 
practised many things and he has been an inspiration to my students even to the whole 
League. There are no other important schools in Europe. I came back and succeeded 
in getting, beside the one old copper plate press the school owned, two others and three 
lithograph presses and many other aids and supports, putting in proper and practical 
fittings. I must thank the New York group of lithographers and especially their leading 
spirit, P. R. Heywood, of Heywood, Strasser & Voight, Messrs. Ketterlinus & Co. and 
Mr. Gorr of the Model Specialty Co. for valuable help. 

I started after a good deal of preliminary heralding. Some twenty or thirty prospec- 
tive pupils submitted work, for I refused to take that of those who had not been through an 


326 


OF TEACHING ETCHING 


art school, and I selected about twelve. I admit I was disappointed—but my eyes were 
opened. I thought my “international,” I had been told, position, would draw crowds 
and the League did too, and were even more disappointed than I. For as soon as the 
students found that etching meant work, that I meant they should work, and that they 
could not learn to do it all and know it all in a month by seeing it all, more fell by the 
wayside. One young lady told me that she not only expected to learn etching in that 
time, but to teach as well. They were not only disappointed but shocked, and a lot 
left. They had come to me from all over the country, one from Sir Frank Short’s 
class in London. JI am sure he must have been as glad to get rid of this pupil as I was 
when he disappeared. There were disabled soldiers on government pensions, another 
was a famous international sculptor, and I was not sorry when he had enough, and 
there were many threats from other real artists that they would join, but luckily they 
changed their minds. This year the “real artists,’ even an Academic American 
and two serious German students are in the class. But the greater number were old 
League students. The rest arrived from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, from 
New Orleans to New York. This sounds like a large crowd, but though there were many 
during the year, not all stayed any length of time or did anything of any value, but the 
best did remain. It is the few who count with me—if not in most schools where numbers 
and fees are the aim. 

I had plenty of ideas and beliefs as to how I should run this class, but no experience 
with American pupils, and I started with two propositions. First: If you have nothing to 
say yourself, go somewhere else and say it. Second: Dont imitate me. I supposed that 
they had something to say for themselves and that they came to me to learn how to say it. 
I was safe I thought in laying down these propositions, for all these students showed work 
which they said proved that they had been years in art schools and now only wanted a 
chance to express themselves by learning the technique of etching. I explained the meth- 
ods, but when I referred to Haden or Hamerton, Lalanne, or Meryon, I was greeted mostly 
by a blank stare. Zorn’s snap shot prices they knew—and Whistler they thought out of 
date, and Rembrandt was a fetish, but actually I found that in this God-gifted Middle 
West uplifted land, many of them had never heard the name of Diirer. It is incredible, 
but a fact. But they knew Cézanne and Renoir. I also had proved to me that what most 
of them wanted, but not all,—they mostly disappeared—was to make big money quick out 
of etching. However, I went ahead in my own way, it may be some others’ way also, it is 
the way in Leipzig, on the supposition that the pupils, having been in art schools before 
they came to me, could draw. That is, if they could draw I could teach them technique, 
the last thing they think of learning, for their idea was just to express themselves— 
especially those who had nothing to express which is the outcome of the New Art. 

I showed them how to ground plates as I have told in this book, but to show 
the method is better, and then suggested that if there was anything any one of them 
wished to say on the plate to do it, and in their own way, after I had pointed out to 
them, as I have in the chapter Of Drawing on the Plate, not how it should, but how 
it must be done, and this must was the most difficult thing to get into their heads, 


327 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


that certain things must be done in certain ways and not in the easiest way or their 
way. I am always willing to consider and adopt any other person’s methods, student’s 
or professor’s, if they are better than mine, and in this way and by experimenting I 
learned much, and some of them did too. I taught them, by making them work it 
out, everything I knew about etching and most of them were willing to work. I end- 
lessly preached to them that it was practice they wanted, once I had showed them 
the technical methods, and many did as I told them. I was not teaching drawing— 
but a craft. In return for this, they found at the end of the first year that their work 
was not like that of untrained students, but of trained craftsmen, and in a show we 
gave this was acknowledged by the few so-called critics who noticed it, and some of 
my pupils found work to do. 

I discovered many things: ‘That some of these young Americans have no knowledge 
of or use for cleanliness, time, order, work, though he has a bath tub and creases in his 
pants and she has bobbed hair. There were waste paper cans, but everything went on the 
floor—nothing was cleaned up in the beginning, nothing put away—nothing done de- 
cently. Now they have learned a lot about cleaning up and a little of technique, but 
will they do anything? That does not depend on me—but on themselves. I can teach 
them and have taught them the way to etch, will they make it of use to themselves? 
Another point is their conceit. The least encouragement, the least success, and the 
American’s head is turned. Any American’s head, in any walk in life. He ceases to 
experiment, to try to make progress, this is the case with the whole country to-day. 
He either does nothing at all but admire himself or turn out endless replicas of himself, 
and he knows it all too—and no one can teach him anything. Will such a state of things 
produce good craftsmen or artists? It has not. I do not believe it will. I do not know 
if it is worth while to go on. As to what the best students think of the class and as I 
have said there are some interesting ones in the class, it is interesting to learn. The 
following article was written without my knowledge and published in The American 
Printer. If it proves anything, it shows what some of the pupils think and those like 
Miss Reinthaler, do think. 

‘* Joseph Pennell’s name is internationally known. To most people it represents a 
distinct personality in the realm of art and letters, it stands for a great artist and fearless 
critic. To me it means even more, for Joseph Pennell is my teacher, and there is no eye 
more searching than that of a pupil, no greater opportunity of learning to know a man 
from an angle even his best friends may never have glimpsed, than during those hours 
spent in the close association of teacher and student. In this instance I should say 
‘student and pupil,’ for Mr. Pennell is and always will be a student with an avid desire 
for knowledge. He is always learning, and if anyone would have the right to say ‘I 
know all there is to be known about etching and lithography,’ it is Joseph Pennell. But 
no, he works with his class as a co-student, is as much excited about a discovery, a new 
way of doing things, an experiment, as we are, and maybe more so than most of us. He 
is filled with the spirit of adventure, and is the least conceited, least opinionated, the 
most open-minded man I have ever met. That is one of the things that contribute to 


328 


OF TEACHING ETCHING 


his greatness as a teacher. Never does he put forward his own way of doing things. 
Rembrandt and Whistler are his two authorities in etching. Our class-room or ‘shop’ 
is hung with enlarged photographs of the works of both of these artists, so that we may 
constantly be confronted by the best, and only the best is good enough for him. Nothing 
slipshod nor superficial is tolerated. 

“No matter how amateurish and clumsy our work, Mr. Pennell divines by some sixth 
sense what we are trying to say, and helps us find our own way of saying it. You will 
see no ‘imitation Pennells’ in our class exhibition. You will be surprised at the variety 
of work and expression. Portraits, landscapes, caricatures, fantastic, imaginative and 
realistic compositions, lettering and ornament, expressed in many forms of graphic art. 
I have wandered around art schools enough to realize what this means, everybody who 
has will appreciate it. It means good teaching, of which, alack, there is only too little. 
People now-a-days are in such a hurry, a hurry to create ‘works of art that will sell.’ 
They copy what they admire, know not why they admire it, or if it is even worthy of 
admiration, and are more interested in tricky technique and weird colour schemes, in what 
they term ‘originality’ and ‘expression,’ than they are in what they have to express, 
or if it is worth while expressing at all. They lack thoroughness because they don’t 
know how to study. Study takes time. One cannot sell study. After a year and a half 
our class is beginning to realize this, but we are learning to study. 

“Tn teaching us graphic art, Mr. Pennell is thorough. He admitted only a compara- 
tively small number of pupils into his class, men and women from all parts of the coun- 
try, and carefully examined the portfolio of work each applicant submitted before making 
his choice. The sixth sense I spoke of came into play here again. From tempera designs, 
oil paintings, pastels and water colours he, with diagnostic eye, determined what branch 
of graphic art, if any, the applicant would be fitted for. 

“Our first lesson was a lantern slide lecture on the various forms of graphic art, a 
brief history of each, and each method taken separately. Cross sections, diagrams, and 
the why, wherefore and how of each step. Etching was taken first because the greater 
percentage of the class was interested in it. One day was spent in grounding plates. 
The next in learning to bite, the third in printing and so on, systematically through the 
various processes. Then came lithography. That being in a way a lost art seemed to 
me much more thrilling. There is nothing like the joy of discovery and experiment. 
We would come excitedly to Mr. Pennell with our ‘discovery.’ The fact that unknow- 
ingly we had stumbled upon something that was an accepted principle before we were 
born could never rob us of the thrill, nor the knowledge we gained in thinking it out. 

“There were trips to Museums with our teacher, heated debates, violent discussions 
as to how this artist ‘got this effect’ or ‘how he probably did that,’ that continued on 
the street cars and sidewalks long after the Museum had closed. There was a splendid 
spirit of codperation in the class, and fortunately a saving sense of humour. We had 
some successful accidents and made many messes. Now the messes are a little less fre- 
quent. We have learned a great deal. We can now make drawings which without the 
intervention of any middleman can be printed. 


329 


ETCHERS AND ETCHING 


“Mr. Pennell is teaching us etching and lithography as crafts and trades, and with 
fine ideals trying to start a department of Graphic Arts in an American school, ‘The 
Art Students’ League of New York,’ that will come up in standard to the teaching of 
these subjects in the schools of France, Great Britain, and Germany, where pupils get 
practical, technical information, and can go right from school into the industry as crafts- 
men, or into the art world as sincere artists who instead of allowing their prints to be 
pulled, or transfers made by professionals because they can not do so themselves, send 


forth their work solely the product of their own hands, talent, labour and skill.” 
MARCH 23, 1924. HELEN T. REINTHALER. 


Miss Reinthaler is not only still in the class but she is working for herselfi—going 
to Europe to study methods in the schools this summer and returning to work again 
in the class in the fall as monitor,* and she is not the only one, as Mr. Locke another 
pupil, now an assistant instructor, is spending the summer in the Ohio Mechanics In- 
stitute and in lithographic shops in Cincinnati. Others have obtained work, show in 
exhibitions and with dealers. This is the sort of teaching I like—and that America wants 
—but gets nowhere else. 


* She has made up her mind to get married instead, and two other of my best young lady pupils 
have gone the same way in the last year. 


330 






a | 


) ETCHERS 





FINALLY TO ETCHERS CHAPTER XLIII 


E not led away by isms or ists. Be yourselves, if you have anything in you, 

having studied with intelligence the work of the great workmen of the past; 

say what you have got to say, in your way, only your way and your work must 

be based on theirs. Do not copy them, but carry on their work, the traditions 
they carried on, remembering they were known and hated, most of them, in their day, 
because they did their work better than their fellows; because they worked their 
lives out learning how to work. To-day is the day of small things, of small men 
and large women; the more incompetent, clumsy, stupid you are the more pull 
you will have, the more you imitate, prig, and steal from your contemporaries, 
always denying that you ever saw their work, the more you will be bowed down to, 
praised up, and collected—if you have the proper business ability. The artist is always 
ignored, till his work which he has done as well as he could by the sweat of his brow and 
the anguish of his soul, is unobtainable, because, if an etcher, he pulled only a few prints, 
or, in a fury at the imbecility of his contemporaries, destroyed his plates. Do not con- 
found cleverness with technical mastery. Whistler and Rembrandt were the greatest 
technicians who ever lived; Meryon and Haden were mostly the stodgiest duffers ; 
their followers are the appreciated of the artless, because they are so easy to imitate. 
Whistler and Rembrandt left no followers; they cannot be followed—that is, imitated— 
in their greatness; but you may gain ideas and help from them, and if you have genius 
surpass them just as Whistler surpassed Rembrandt. If God did not give you this, you 
may be a very successful person, without being an etcher at all. 

Do not hark back to the catalogued mistakes and messes of the Middle Ages; if 
you make something like these back numbers, you will be acclaimed by the critics of to- 
day and ignored by the artists of to-morrow and may be forgotten by all but those who 
have collected you in the present—and reviled by them when they try to sell their 
collections. 

Be yourself, carry on tradition, doing the best work you can, and if you have any- 
thing in you, you will come off sometime. 

If you do not make etchings because you love to—fear to—have to—you are 
not, and never will be, an etcher. 


Dos 





~s 





i as 








INDEX 


PAGE 

Abbey, E. A., Artist . ; ; so ES 
Academy of San Fernando, Madrid f 4S 
Acids for Use in Etching , : = (214 
Preparation of, for Biting In . ; a 235 
Ainsworth, Harrison, Author ‘ : we t30 
Allison, H. V. 5 ; , ‘ : 5 © gall 
Aluminium Plates, Use of 208 
American Art Review ; : e3OT 
American Plates, Reliability bi ; d Poo? 
American Rollers . ; 5 ee 
Anglo-American Exhibition (London: TO1A) 314 
Aquatint 253, 204 
Specimens of, ay foreon Renna 261, 265 
Aquatint Grounds 209, 223 
Aquatints, Goya’s ; 161, 164 
Girtin’s and Cotman’s_ . : : 5 SLOT 
Rops’ fe gS OL TOs 
Architecture: Recbrandt? s Works in : 2 100 
Lalanne as an Illustrator of . : 2) 262 
Art, Difference between Good and Bad Ts 
Art Amateur, the Real ; : : ees 
Art Criticism ? : , 14 
Art Students’ League oF New Vor 325-330 
Artists, Motives of, in Making Etchings . tO 
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 310 
Austrian Section Leipzig Exhibition of 1914 ar2 


Avery, S. P., Collector . ‘ kG 22 
Avery Collection. New York Public Tbrary toe 


Bacher, Otto, Artist 86, 99, 102 
Balance, Preservation of, in Prints Shows 317 
Bauer, M.-J., Artist . 4 : : ia? 
Beardsley, Aubrey, Artist. ; : ; iA7 
Binyon, L., Author : : ‘ : 5 Be 
Biting, Corrections in ; i 240 
Biting In, Art of 231-2, 237-8 
Bitten Line, Work in: 

By Meryon Sh ie 8 

By Whistler . Aue 55; 59; 1, 69, 77; 79; 


83, 87, 90, 91, 103 
By Duveneck 2 P : : 5 103 


By Rembrandt IGS; 107, 211,015, 110, 
122, 123; 120, 133 
By Haden. : 3 ; : ~Sirs9 
By Van Dyck : . ‘ +A 2 147 
By Buhot . : é : 7 tor 
By Lalanne . : : : . me tga 
By Pennell : 235 

Van Dyck’s Contrasted mith Rembrandt S 
and Whistler’s : ‘ . 2 147 


PAGE 

“Black Lead,” Comparison of Etching with . 3 
Blake, William, Artist 155, 550 
America iS), 
Relief Plates by 310 


The Inventor of Mechanical Vine Reenne 155 


Blanche, Jacques, Artist : : aC 
Books on Etching F 3 ; ix 
Bordeaux, Etched by alaene ; . 192 
Bosse, Author 106, 220, 224 
Bracquemond, F., Aviat 34, 162 

Edmond de Goncourt 194 
British Academicians of Dickens Period 139 
British Decorative Art Exhibition in Paris(1914) 310 
British Museum . : : ; 2102 

Subjects by Coven in . : ; = A 

Print Exhibition Gallery Site 312 
Browne, H. K. (Phiz), Artist . . 139 
Brownell, W. C., Author : ; : . 6 
Buhot, Felix, Artist 126, 162, 192, 299 

Westminister 190 
Burnishers for Use in Etching ; , -ats 
Burty, Philip, Collection of . : : .- 162 
Cadart, Publisher , : ‘ . 299 
Calcografica, Madrid . : : SmePIOL, 104 
Calcographic Museums AZ, 161; 164 
Callot, Artist 130; 147 
Camera Club of Tondor 318 


Canaletto, Artist ; 176 


Caricaturists, Not Worth Stutly Technically 139-40 
Catalogues and Cataloguing . 321-2 
Caxton Club of Chicago 322 
Celluloid Plates, Use of : He e20 
Century Magazine : : : . : 6 
Chase, W. M., Artist 102, 106 
Children, Biches of, by Whitley : ee 
Cincinnati Art Museum : : : tpeto2 
Claude, Artist ‘ 176, 192 
Cole, T., Engraver : 6 


Cieaie of Blue and White N cae Daraaee 


Catalogue of : 126 
Collectors and Collecting 15, a6, 23, 24, 25, 309, 310 
Colour Etchings 277-9 


Commercial Collecting : ; : maels 


Constable, T., Artist 175, 268 
Copper Plate Press 215 
Copper Plates, Varieties of 207 
Copyright Law, American - 2093 
Corot, J. B. C., Artist . 139, 192 
Correr Museum 176 


oi, 


INDEX 


PAGE 
Cotman, J. S., Artist 139, 161 
Cruikshank, G., Artist . 139, 147 
Cubism, an Attempt to Disguise Incompetence. 192 
Daubigny, C. F., Artist. 139 
Daumier, H., Artist : 147 
De Jonghe, Clement, Dealer 7 200 

Whistler’s Portrait of O15 76, 100 
Delatre, Printer Az, AF, OF, 72, 76; 200 
Desbaines, Brunet, Artist 192 
Devoe and Reynolds, Dealers 203 
Dickens, Charles, as Art Critic 139 
Dickens Illustrators : ; ; <2? 530 
Dodgson, Campbell . : : KEV 
Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell, Publishers fee at! 
Doyle, J. (H. B.), Artist 139 
Drake, Sir W., Secretary of Painter Bichers 102 
Drawing in Monochrome, Comparison of 

Etching with . ‘ : : ; 3 
Dry Point, Work in: : : 

By Whistler . Vi; XVile ga) 05,700 

By Rembrandt -6FLS 

By Haden 183, 184 

By Pennell : 246, 271 

Description of Method 242, 246 
Dry Point Needles . 212 
Dry Points, Number of inipresunns from 290 
Duran, Amand, Photo Engraver : BES fe! 
Diirer, A., Artist . ix, 4, 15, 100, 102, 143 

The Cannon . ) 10,11, 143 

Etching on Iron by 143 

Photogravure Copies of . 278 
Dutch Mordant, Use of 106 

Used by Rembrandt 214 
Duveneck, Frank, Artist 86, 87 

The Riva : ; 86, 87 

Large Plates Made ny : ; 99 

Whistler Charged with Signing Name of 99, 102 

The Ca’ d’Oro : 99, 102 

The Rialto 99, 105, 106 

Desdemona’s House 102 


Medal Awarded at Panama- Pacikic saree 
tion : < , ‘ : ae LOe 


Earlom, R., Artist : 176 
Edinburgh, Bag Scottish Academy aise 312 
Edinburgh College of Art S3 
Electrotypes of Plates 289 


English plates, Expensive and Untetable <7 207 
English Rollers 211 
Engraving, Comparison berrec Biching andl 4, 10 


Engraving on Metal. : x 
Enlargement, as Proof of Good evinee aye ke 
Etching and the War . : : : Ree ge 8 
Etching: Books on : ix-x 
Learning and Practice . : ix 
Engraving and Mezzotint Gontrasted ike x 
Futility of Comparing with Other Arts. 3 


PAGE 
Etching: — 

An Art Foreign to British Temperament . 4 
Compared with Wood-Engraving 4 
Compared with Line Engraving 4 
Compared with Engraving. : ~| “ake 
Highest Skillin. ; . ’ Be 
Causes of Failure . : : ; eee 
Vital, Passionate Art. ' ; eee 
Lack of Genuine Interest in’. ; ees 
Artist’s Motives in : ; ; + Ed 
Booms in : : Rte de 
Illistrations of Dicken’ S Wisries! 139 
Iron Used for f 143 
Materials Necessary for 203-6 
Grounds 209-10 
Grounding and eh Roles 211 
Needles. 212 
Sharpening of Tools 212 
Burnishers 213 
Roulettes 213 
Scrapers 213 
Acids 214 
Ink 217 
Paper pre 
Grounding Plates 220-23 
Drawing on the Plate 224-26 
Biting In 231-2, 237-8 
Corrections in Biting 240 
Re-grounding oe ode 
Dry Point 242-46 
Sand Paper Method 253-254 
Aquatint, Resin Ground 260 
Aquatint, Dust Ground . 264 
Mezzotinting 267-8 
Printing in Colour . 277-8 
Monotypes 279 
Relief Plates . 280 
Printing 281-290 
Steel Facing Platest 289 
Trials and States 203-5 
Signing of Proofs EOS 
Publication of Prints 299-300 
Number of Proofs . 300 
Preservation of Prints 303-5 
The Matter of Framing . 305 
Arrangement of a Print Room 309-318 
Cataloguing . 321-2 
Final Words of Ades 333 
Etching, by S. R. Koehler 209 


Etchings, The Collecting of 15, 16, 23,24, fe 300, 310 


Etching Societies ‘ : : f + ag 
Exhibitions 309-318 
Finberg, A. J. 177 
Fine Art Society . : ; . ao 
Fletcher, F. Morley, Color Printer : 314 
Florian, Engraver : : : ; . 6 


338 


PAGE 

Forain, H., Artist 14 
Fortuny, M., Artist 139 
Fragonard, A. E., Artist 161 
Framing of Etchings cos 
Frauds . 293, 303-4 
Of Unscrupulous Prnters 304 
French Plates, Imperfections of 208 
Galleries, Public 309 
Geddes, A., Artist 139 
Gentle Art, The 99 
German Plates, papertections of 208 
Ghent International Exhibition (1913) 314 
Gillray, J., Artist . 139 
Girls as Drawn by Whistler 68 
Girtin, T., Artist 139, 161 


Goulding, F., Printer 
Goya, Francisco, Artist 


me 88, 135, 183, 
. 43, 147, 161, 162, 


289 
164 


Disasters of War 161 
The Caprices . 161 
Bull Fights 161 
The Garrotted 162 
Duel ; 162 
Devil Sowing Tares over poe ; 169 
Mala Noche Ou. 165 
Grolier Club 312 
Portfolios of . ; 3or 
Grounding Plates in Etching . 220-223 
Grounds, Etching 209,210 
Guest, M. J. H., Director xii 
Guild of Print Sellers 300 
Haddon & Sons, Press Builders 204 
Haden, Annie, Whistler’s Portraits of re) 


Haden, Sir F. Seymour, Artist 4, 10, 14, 43, 


BO, 00, 102, 153, 212, 237, 289, 333 
About Etching ix 
Term ‘Painter Etcher”’ invented by 29 
Quoted on Rembrandt’s Three Trees 125 
Imitation of Rembrandt by : et 20 
Breaking Up of the Agamemnon 183, 188, 189 
Turner’s Calais Pier 5 183 
Out of the Study Window. 183 
Shere Mill Pond , erx83 
Sunset in Ireland 183, 184, 185 
Grim Spain 183 
Kilgarn Castle : 183 
Description of a state by 204 
Haig, Axel H. ey) 
Hals, Franz, Artist 58, 68 
Hamerton, P. G., Artist and athe ix, 
3. 4. 125, 139, 175, 171, 176, 237, 299 
Etcher’s Handbook . : ‘ ilae be 
Etching and Etchers ix, 3, 281 
Comparisons of 13 
On Art Criticism aoa 
Blunders of, over Meryon 33, 36 
On Omission of Lines from Etchings 43 


INDEX 


339 


PAGE 

Hamerton, P. G.— 
Copy of Haden’s Work by 183 
Criticism of Goya . 162 
Lalanne Boomed by 192 
Toy Press Invented by 215 
Hands, Whistler’s Drawings of : eure: 
Hanging, Importance of, at Exhibitions . 314-316 
Harper’s Monthly . 6 
Haskell, Ernest Xxi 
Hattay Brothers, Pins Made iy 318 
Havard, Henri, Author 192 
Heffernan, Jo, Model 6, 64 
Herkomer, Sir H. von, Artist 279 
Heywood, P. R. 326 
Hind, A. M., Author xi, 125 
History of arranne and Poking * xili 
Hogarth, William, Artist 140 
Little Etching Done by . 147 
Hokusai, Artist 58 
Holbein, H., Artist 147 
Hollande @ Vol d’Oiseau 5 | Be 
Hollar, W., Artist niT30, 01.47 
Houghton, A. B., Artist 147 
Impressionism, Meaning of 36 
India Papers » 215 
Ink for Printing Htehites 217, 283 
Intaglio Plates in Colour 278 
International Society in London . 318 
Iron Plates . 143, 208 
Used by Diirer 208 
Italian Plates, Imperfections ei ey nae? 
Jacque, C., Artist 61, 139 
Jacquemart, J., Artist 126, 162 
A Great Technician et 
Japanese, Conventions of 68, 100 
Japanese Papers 218, 284 
Jongkind, Artist 139 
Keene, Charles, Artist . 2K) 
Keppel, F., Collector : 23, 102, 289 
On arn as a Siereseful Business Etcher 183 
Ketterlinus & Co. = 6320 
Koehler, S. R., Author xii, 192, 299 
Kraus, Press Builders 204, 
Lacquer for Grounding Plates 210, 222 
Lalanne, Maxime, Artist 40, 183, 192 
Treatise on Etching ix 
Rue des Marmousets 193 
A Cusset ; / 193 
Lamp for Use in Grounding Plates 221 
Landscape Etchings by Rembrandt 100 
Lawson, J. Kerr, Artist 135 
Leech, John, Artist : : 14, 139 
Legros, A., Artist xxii, XXlii, 4, 13, 86, 99, 102 
Estimate of Work of Oar ys 
Leipzig Academy . 210 


INDEX 


PAGE 
Leipzig Book and Graphic Arts Exhibition 


(1914) 219, 311, 312, 314, 317 

Lepére, A., Artist . xiv, 6 
vey prtenisiiie 199 
Lettered Editions, So- mes 203 


Leyland Children, Whistler’s Portraits of eee 


Liber Studiorum 175, 277 
Liber Studiorum mezzotints 175,075 
Liber Veritatis 176 
Lighting of Print Roane 311 
Line Engraving, Comparison of Btching ane : 4 
Lines, Value of, in Etching . : : oeee0 
Lithographic Stone, Use of, for Etching . 208 
Lithography, Comparison of Etching with, . 3 
Lithography and Lithographers S27 
London, Studies of, by Felix Buhot 162, 190 
London Memorial Whistler Exhibition 316 
Lucas, W., Engraver x 175 

Reproductions of Constable? S Sethe: 268 


Magazines, Engravings in American ; : 6 


Mansfield, Howard, on Catalogues 322 
Mantegna, Andrea, Artist X, 100 

Legros’ Imitation of 162 
Marble, Use of, for Etching 208 


Marc Antonio, Artist . : : : : = 


Materials for Etching, List of 203-206 
Menpes, Mortimer, Artist 92, 289 
Menzel, Adolf von, Artist ; ; oy ILA? 
Meryon, Charles, Artist 33, 34, 43, 50, 192, 300, 333 
Collége Henri Quatre 33, 35030)43 
Drawing of Tower of St. Jacques. cnetEeae 
Siryge . : : : : : eres 
San Francisco ; : ; sts 
The Abside of Notre Dine : : al 33 
Le Ministére de la Marine : , coach <a a: 
Morgue : BAN 30227, 40 
Technique of ; : : AG 
Printing of His Richingss : ‘ Aika 
Prints Available from Plates by ; eG TAS 
Not an Etcher, but a Fad : d Rey, 
Callot and Hollar Responsible for rAy 
Metal Engraving , E : x 
Mezzotint, contrasted with Fechine 2 ; x 
Description of Method E 267-8 
Specimens of, by Joseph Pennell 272, 274 
Mezzotints, Turner’s 75.70 
Michael Angelo, Artist 48 
Michel, A., Author 25.135 
Millet, J. F., Artist 139 
Model Specialty Co. 326 
Monet, Claude, Artist . 321 
Monochrome, Drawing in . : : ‘ 3 
Monotypes . 279 
Morris, William, Decorator XV, 310 
Musée Calcographique in the Louvre. aes 
Museums with Printing Offices ‘ : <A 


PAGE 

Mounting of Prints 303 
Nanteuil, Artist X, 180, 15 
Portrait of the Duc de M. aletaye I50, I5I 


National Academy, New York : : eS 
National Gallery, London 178, 311 
Needles, Etching gr2 
Nudes, Rembrandt’s and Other Etchers’ and 


Engravers’ 100 
Numbering of Proofs . 300 
Oil Painting, Comparison of Rochas with : 3 
Old Water Colour Society Exhibition 318 
“Open Letter Proofs” 293 
Orlik, Prof. Emil xix, 326 
Overproduction, Talk of 147 
Painter Etchers and Engravers, Roel Soci. 

ety of : ‘ 29, 102, 300 
Painter Etchers Society’s Exhibition 318 
Palmer, Samuel, Artist . 139, 176 


Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco 102, 318 
Paper for Printing Etchings . 218-19 

Loss of, in the War p xi, 2190 
Paris: Meryon’s Love for ; j F = ie 


Studies of, by Meryon 162 
Buhot’s Studies of . 162 
Excellence of Tools Made in 212 
Paris Whistler Memorial Show 316 


Pen Drawing, Comparison of Etching with : 3 


Pennell, Joseph, Artist 102, 228 
London Out of My Window 229, 246 
Saint Paul’s Over Waterloo 234, 235, 250, 25% 
The Turn of the Tide 234,235 
Saint Paul’s in War Time 236, 237 
The Search Lights 256, 257 
Song of the Search Lights 260, 261 
London in War Time 260, 261 
The Shot Tower 264, 265 
The Shot Tower and the Brite Osh Pry 
Wren’s City 274, 275 

Pennell, Mrs. ’ ; ‘ 3 exh 

Peters Brothers, Printers 290 

Phiz (H. K. Browne), Artist ; 53536 

Photo Engraving : : ? ; 5 6 
Basis of 281 

Photogravure 5 278 

Pickwick, Mr., Created ty Sayatont 139 

Piranesi, Artist 176 
The Carceri 176 

Plates for Etching, Varieties of 99, pone 

Polyautographic Album, The . 155 

Portfolio, The 3 192, 299 

Presses for Printing Etchings 215 


Price of Prints. = ; a eon 
Print Collector’s Cuaron The RS) 5's 
Printers, Fraudulent Practices of Unscrupulous. 304 
Printing of Etchings 6, 29-30, 281-290 


340 


INDEX 


PAGE 

Print Room, Arrangement of a 309-318 
Prints: Publication of 299-300 
Preservation of 303-305 
Frames for an 
Proofs: Cut Down 88, 92 
Varieties of 293 
Signing of 295 
Number Which Should bé Pulled . 300 
“Proofs before Letters,” So-called : ae 203 
Quantity production of Etchings, . \lesie 
Railton, Herbert, Artist 278 
Rawlinson, T., Author . 175 
Red Chalk Domings, Imitations of 278 
Reinthaler, Helen T. Aimer 
Relief Plates 280 
Remarque Proofs, So- patie 293 


Rembrandt, Artist. SVU 1O, 12. 15,020, 34: 
48, 54, 99, 100, 106, I10, 114, 118, 122, 125, 
126, 128, 132, 135, 139, 140, 147, 215, 224, 


277, 333 
Three Trees IO, II; 100, 14 
Printing of Etchings ee : 29-30 
Comparisons of Whistler and . 48, 61, 62, 


86, 88, 94, 99, 106, I10, 112, 125, 126, 135 


Burgomeister Six : 61, 89 
Portrait of Clement de Jonghe . 61, 78, I00 
Portrait of His Mother 61, 100 


The Mill OT, 100,707, £14, 126 
Beggars at the Door of a House 86, 122, 123, 126 


Amsterdam 045.05; 125 
Large Plates of 99-100 
Landscape Etchings 100 
Arnoldus Tholinx 100 
Bust of Rembrandt when a Viewer Ma an 100 
Juan Luima : ; 100 
Rembrandt Etching . 100 
Young Man Musing 100 
Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill 100 
Architectural Work of 106 
Wonder of Work Seen and Rendacet by 106 
Best Portrait by . 10 
The Mother 110, III 
The Gold Weigher’s Field. 114, Ae 125, 126, 132 
Greatest Landscape by , OTT a 
Six Bridge fis, 120, 125 
Poor Landscape Work a hte) 
Omval 125,126 
Story of Etching of Six Beidee 125 
The Hog : 125, 126 
Hundred Guilders Print 126 
The Shell 126 
Wedding of Jason 126 
The Three Crosses . : ne, Le Pa 
Christ Presented to the People .126 128, 129, 132 
The Beggars . 132 
Followers of . 139 


PAGE 

Rembrandt— 
Only Etcher of His Age . 140 
Imitated by Seymour Haden 183 
Photogravure Copies of . 278 
States Perpetrated by 300 
Renouard, Paul, Artist . ; i 2 he Bik 
Retroussage in Printing : : enon, 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Artist . : : : x 
Roberson & Co., Dealers 203, 208, 224 
Rodin, Auguste, Sculptor 315 
Main de Dieu 315 
Roman International Exhibition ( Pe oy 318 


Rome, Calcographic Museumin. : aa a3 


Rops, Félicien, Artist 161, 162, 164 
Rossetti, D. G., Artist . , 154 
Roulette, Plate by Joseph Benrell! NEE 
with a 251 
Roulettes, Discussion of 213 
Rovinsky’s Catalogue of Remapranct 321 
Rowlandson, Artist 139 
Royal Academy of Arts. 3,4 
Royal Scottish Academy at Eainbareh 312 
Ruskin, John, Author 78, 102, 130; 175 
To be Avoided as Critic . 139 
Etchings after Turner by 175 
Russia, Rembrandt Proofs from : ee 
Sand Paper Grounds 223, 253, 254 
Specimens of, by Joseph Pennell 257 
San Francisco Exhibition in 1915 102, 318 
Scrapers for Use in Etching o13 
Scribner’s Magazine ‘ ; : : : 6 
Sculpture in Print Shows ; . EST 
Seeleys, Publishers ; » : : 3, 299 
Senefelder, Aloys, Inventor 279 
Senefelder Club 318 
Seymour, Robert, Artist 139 
Sharpening of Tools : 212 
Short, Frank, Artist san. ee 274, 326 
On the Making of Etchings 2 he ee ES 
Singer, Hans W., Die Moderne Graphik by Saws 


Singer and Strang, Eiching and Engraving 
an . ; : er ix 


Societies of Etchers ehh ieheravers 300 
Soft Ground, Making of : 223 
Soft Ground Etching . : : : ; 3 
By Joseph Pennell, London Out of My 

Window 228, 229 
Songs of Innocence : : Y 280 
Spanish Calcographic Gallery, : : a AR 
Spongetype, Herkomer’s E 279 
Standardized Art . 325 
States 291-295 
Steel Engraving, atmehs ae in England : 4 
Steel Facing of Plates ; 2 . 289 
Steel Plates, Use of ; 2 . 208, 289 
Steinlen, T., Artist ; : : : . 14 


341 


INDEX 


PAGE 

Strang, William, Artist . IX, XV, 212, 242 
Portrait of R. Kipling. ; erty, 
Swineherd : Aone gave) 
Swindles and Swindling Devices 293, 303-4 
Thackeray, W. M., Author . . A et sO 
Thomas, Mr., of A. H. Thomas Company Se 
Thompson, Sir Henry, Catalogue of : 426 
Thornbury, W., Author. : : ~ ores 
Tiepolo, G. B., Artist . : ; ; OF 
Titian, Artist : : : : ; . 148 
Tower of London, The . : kee) 
Trial Proofs . : . o. eos 


Turner, J. M. W., Artist 4, 78, 100 


175). 1765,477,°1795 170) 102 


Etchings for the Liber Studiorum 7s br 
Mezzotints by ; : é h as 
St. Catherine’s Hill 178, 179 
Turner Rooms in National Gallery 5 Gat 
Van Dyck, Anthony 147, 148, 150 
Lucas Vostermans . z : ; DAY 
Portrait of Snyders . é : nLsO 
Vasari, Giorgio, Author and Agiaty : Sey; 
Velarium, the 311, 314-316 
Velasquez, Artist 58, 68, 148 
Goya’s Versions of : : : Shey as: 
Venice, Group of Etchers in . ; : ; = i02 
Vienna Gallery. ; : ane} 
Visentini, Engraver : ; : a ie 
Thirty-Eight Views of Venice : : eLETO 
Walker, Emery, Printer : : : . 289 
Wall Coverings at Exhibitions : 313-14 
Waltner, T., Engraver . : ; te t02 
War, Effect i the,on Art. ; xi 
Water Colour Painting, Comparison of Rechine 
with. 3 : : : : 3 
Water marks in paper 218, 219 
Weber & Co., Dealers . 203, 200, 211, 220, 222 
Weir, J. Alden... : . ; : BA. ce i 
Weitenkampf, F., Director ; : : Bee) pe) 
Welsh, H. Denis 2 sp ed 
West Point Training of Whistler 47 


Whistler, J. McNeill, Artist xiii, xiv, xv, 4, 14, 


19, 20, 34, 40, 47, 48, 61, 62, 75, 76, 
88, 89, 102, 147, 148, 277, 325, 333 


Riault the Engraver ; ; : e441) 
Finette . : 4 ; ; : fe OL 
Jo : , : f ; ; ete? 
The Greatest Printer of Etchings . ae Oe 
Quoted on Meryon : a 933 
Black Lion Wharf . re 3 48, oe 58, 61, 106 
L'Isle dela Cité. : ; : ot M3e 
Meryon and . : é : eat 
Douze Eaux-Fortes d’aprés N: ie: : ey Ad 
His Early Plates. : : : REA veo 
His School Training : ; , ma a? iy 
The Greatest of Etchers . : ; 47, 98 


342 


Whistler, J. McNeill— 


PAGE 


Work Compared with Rembrandt’s, 48, 61, 
62, 86, 94, 88, 99, 106, I10, 122, 125, 


Sireet in Saverne 

The Kitchen . 

The Miser 

Thames Series 

The Unsafe Tenement 

The French Set ; 
Annie Haden in the Big Hat 
Bibi Valentin 

Bibi Lalouette 

The Adam and Eve Old Chelan 


Way in Which His Work Stands Falance 


ment 
Weary . 
Dutch Series . 


First and Second Venice Series 


Nocturne Palaces 
Nocturne Shipping . 

The Beggars . 

The Embroidered Gutman 
The Lace Curtain 
Traghetto 


Girls and Not Guys Drea by 


Portraits of Children 
The Brussels Series. 
The Naval Review 
The Paris Series 

The Thames, Lithotint 
The Touraine Series 
Method of Work 

The Bridge 

The Doorway 

The Butterfly . 

The Palaces 

The Salute 

Traghetio 

The Riva 

Zaandam 

Trimming of Pane by 
The Propositions 


75-6, 88, 92 


128, 135 


. 48, 49, 50 


48 
ae.” 
48, 106 


48, 53, 54, 106 


5°; 54 


61, 67, 68, 100 


Gr, 71472 
61,473 
61 


2 On 
61, 63, 64 
62 

62, 82 

62 
62 


62, 85, 86, 97 


62 
62 
62 
68 
72 
75 
75 
(ie 
is 
16 


77, 78, 162 
81, 82 

82 

82 

Shae 
89, 88 

<2 86 

94, 95 
ee 

99 


Failure in Attempt to Etch His ‘Mother 100, IIO 
Charged with Signing Duveneck’s Name 99, 102 
Quoted on Rembrandt’s Clement de Johnge. 100 


The Longshoremen . 
Soupe a Trois Sous 
Amsterdam 

Dog on the Kone 
Quality of Simplicity 
The Wine Glass 


Diirer’s Etchings Ranked with Those 


of . . 
Not Mannered 
Needles Used by 


Whistler, J. McNeill— 


Removal of Steel Face from Thames Series. 


Quoted on Editors . 

Signing of Proofs by 

Low Prices of Early Prints 

Catalogues of Works 

Quoted on Cataloguing 
White, C. Harry . : 
Whitney, J. H. E. Br tere, 
Wilkie, David, artst 


INDEX 


PAGE 


Wolf, Henry, Engraver 
Wood-Engraving 
Work, Rembrandt Rice es to See and 
Render Wonder of 
Wrenn, Mr., Collector . 
Zinc Plates: Reasons for Use of 
Biting In 
Number of Impressions fon 
Zorn, Anders, Artist 
The Toast 


343 


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